Fall is often a hard season for loss families. With all the excitement and busyness of back-to-school time, loss families are not sharing in the joy. Loss families are painfully aware that their baby/child is not heading back to school and their hearts ache as they would give anything to have their child with them and amongt the kids going to school. Loss families are very aware of how old their heavenly baby would be is they were still with them. “Little Megan would have been 5 and starting kindergarten this year”.

Fall is often a hard season for loss families. With all the excitement and busyness of back-to-school time, loss families are not sharing in the joy. Loss families are painfully aware that their baby/child is not heading back to school and their hearts ache as they would give anything to have their child with them and amongt the kids going to school. Loss families are very aware of how old their heavenly baby would be is they were still with them. “Little Megan would have been 5 and starting kindergarten this year”.

How can it be well with your soul when your baby has died? It definitely sounds like a contradiction, but is it? I have lost 8 babies and I can honestly say it is well with my soul. Why? Because I have some incredible strength of my own? Absolutely not! Rather, its because I have an incredible God who is my everything. But you might say, but really, when your babies died, did you feel like it was well with your soul in that moment or the days to follow? Again, I say yes. Please don’t confuse ‘my soul being well’ with not experiencing the agonizing pain of loss. I most definitely felt the pain of the loss, the grief that comes in waves & the excruciating heartbreak. When I say it is “well with my soul”, it is because I am a child of God and no matter what life circumstances crash around me, God is with me and that never changes.

There is a truth in this world that seems so quite simple that it feels like it need not even be mentioned, but sadly the act of not mentioning it has made it become forgotten. This truth is that there is a father behind every pregnancy, and thus, there is a grieving father behind every loss.

“Read Isaiah 40, the whole chapter. It has slowly become my mantra as I’ve gone through the hardships in life. During my periods of pain, I read and mediate on the words.”

She had no idea how much I would cling to those words in the coming years. She had no idea that I would go home and study that chapter in the bible for hours, or that I spent morning after morning working on memorizing the chapter, or how Isaiah 40 showed up outside of my personal devotions almost on a weekly basis for the next year. She had no idea, but God did.

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Why? Why us and not them? Why them and not us? Why is life so incredibly unfair at times? Why, when all around me I see women having healthy babies, do we have to walk through a story of loss… again? The first time, I didn’t have so many questions… now let the questions roll. And as my heart has shouted and whispered those questions, I haven’t been able to shake all the recent stories I’ve heard that have only lifted my eyes to the fact that I do not live in a world of fairness…

Is there a perfect gift when a friend has lost a baby? The perfect gift is love and support. You can show your love and support in many different ways, it does not always involve something you buy. However, if you decide to buy a gift, here are some considerations:.

The fact that you are thoughtful enough to purchase a loss gift means you are on the right track. The most hurtful thing for a loss mom is when people who care about her do not acknowledge the death of her baby and avoid talking about it.

Loss Mom's fear that the memory of their baby will be forgotten. Giving them a remembrance item is a loving way to acknowledge the baby and keep their memory alive.

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Looking back a year ago when we began a journey that has forever changed our lives. A journey where unimaginable sorrow is turned to unexplainable joy, where our own broken pieces fed more than we could dream. A journey where Jesus and life and eternity became more real than ever before. A journey where death came knocking, seeking to destroy but LIFE… LIFE that can only be found in Jesus… WON.

We sat in eager anticipation to see our first child on the big, ultra techie ultrasound screen, only to be told that they couldn’t find a skull, it wasn’t good and we’re sending you to a high-risk doctor immediately. We held each other, we cried, we prayed and then we drove the longest 30 minute drive of our lives to find out what was going on with our firstborn.

“Oh Lord, what are you going to ask us to walk through?” drew tears and fear as we drove on the highway that day.

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I’m sure you’ve not heard that phrase posted on many a Facebook status. No, we are great (I am great) at declaring God’s goodness when He does something for us, when he shows up in the way we had prayed and hoped. When He provides, when He heals. I heard a story of a man who was reading his Bible on a train when it crashed and killed many. He told a reporter “ I don’t know why I didn’t die, why I’m still alive… God is so good.” While I do not disagree with his statement, nor do I think we shouldn’t declare God’s goodness when He spares our life, heals, and provides. I just couldn’t help but think of the questions that may appear in the hearts of all the families who did lose someone on that train, the families who know God and those who didn’t “Was God then not being good to them, to us?” I felt this question stirring in my heart as I listened to a story of a family whose son was all but declared dead and as they prayed over his lifeless body… he began to breathe, his life had been restored. And they sat and spoke with deep power and conviction of God’s healing power, His goodness. Part of me wished they would have added “But He is our healer, He is powerful, He is good regardless of whether He had given life to our son.” Observing their faith as they spoke, I’m confident they would have said that, though through tear-stained eyes if the outcome would’ve been different.

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My eyes are lifting towards the goodness of the Lord. My battered soul, my wrecked spirit, the pieces of my brokenness are starting to form into JOY.

Unexpected joy, unanticipated hope.

I didn’t know if it would come. I don’t know if it will stay. But something is different.

There is a hope and joy in my soul that has stayed longer, that is deeper, more rooted in God’s love and goodness.

My mind has begun to think more often on eternity, not just on what I’m missing here, but what I will gain there and what the Lord has for us in the waiting.

I’m ever so slowly embracing this beautiful & broken story as part of a greater story that He is writing… that I can trust Him with.

He IS turning my “mourning into dancing” Psalm 30.

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Our precious daughter Sophie was born a month and two weeks ago now. We miss her so much. Some days I’ll have moments of great sadness as I long to hold her again and hear her heart-warming little breaths, followed by feelings of delight when I think of how beautiful her chubby little face and body are, followed by life feeling very normal, followed by life feeling very much not normal and out of place but with no words to describe what that feels like. This is the place of grieving. I used to describe grieving as a process, but lately I see it more as a place. A place you find yourself in for an extended period of time. There’s different areas of the place of grieving that I experience at various moments, but it’s not a journey or process I’m traveling through. It’s just a place I’m living in. In the midst of grieving I’m discovering it’s not so much about “getting through it” or a destination on the other side of the journey that I’m trying to reach. The point isn’t about getting through it in order to be done with it and move on with life. The point of grieving is allowing myself to sit and live in the healthy-but-very-unenjoyable place of grief. And in doing so, slowly over time healing and transformation happens. CS Lewis describes this transformation in A Grief Observed. “There was no sudden, striking, and emotional transition. Like the warming of a room or the coming of daylight. When you first notice them they have already been going on for some time.” -p. 46.

As Lindsey and I grieve in the midst of our incredible

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As we had Sophie’s epic (yes it was epic) life celebration service, I spent time writing a letter to my daughter of the ways God has used (and is using) her 42 weeks, 2 days and 10 hours of life in my life. This is the letter I shared at her service.

Dear Sophie,

Today we celebrate your life with family & friends & people I’ve never met but who love you deeply. I wish we were just taking a one month photoshoot of you and quietly celebrating your one month birthday in our home and no one really knows except our family. I wish a lot of things today for you, for us, that are not to be. For this is not our story, and this is not your story. So we celebrate your short, yet powerful little life today. Sophie, you have touched the lives of thousands by never uttering more than a cry yet there are no lives you have changed more than your mom and dad’s. We so wanted to be the ones to teach you about life; how to walk, talk, how to eat with a fork, that boys don’t have cooties (but you still have to watch out for them), how to dance with countless dance parties, how to play with others and not be too bossy (since that’s the curse of every firstborn and I know from experience!). We wanted to teach you when you disobey about the love of Jesus, that He died for all the wrong we’ve ever done to make us clean, that we can’t obey on our own strength, but desperately need Jesus. We wanted to teach you that Jesus satisfies our deepest desires and we wanted to watch you grow in being the woman of God He created you to be and all the gifts and talents we would discover He had given you along the way. And the truth is, the greatest things we wanted to teach you about the love of our lives, you have already learned and have and will continue to live out who God has called you to be. So now, you are teaching us the very things we have wanted to teach you from the vantage point of eternity.

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This is our second post from Lindsey's family, written by her husband.

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Lindsey and I (this is her husband Kevin writing) returned home from the hospital on Monday night. Leaving the hospital and returning home without our sweet Sophie with us was incredibly hard. As Lindsey and I slowly climbed the stairs to our apartment (I’m so proud of Lindsey and how well she has been physically recovering), Lindsey looked to our door and said in tears, “There is supposed to be a sign on the door that says, ‘Welcome Home Sophie’.” But there wasn’t. Because Sophie wasn’t with us. We have cried and cried as we miss holding our little baby girl and miss making memories as a family as we have for so many months. There is so much to grieve. And we have also experienced such joy as we’ve looked at photos and videos of the precious 10 hours God gave us with our daughter and the 42 weeks before that. We’ve remembered so many details (and realized new ones) of how God orchestrated the joyous hours of Sophie’s birth and life with us face-to-face. As we grieve and celebrate together, I’m getting to see certain things–even things that used to seem so familiar–in a new light. Two days ago I spent some time with God, listening and talking with him. I started to write in my journal some of what I was processing, and these are some of the words I wrote as I listened to the song that was playing when Sophie was born…

As a Loss Parent, how should you answer the question - How many children do you have? On Instagram and Facebook, we usually post a heart question to the loss community once a week. Recently we posted the question “What do you say when someone asks you how many children you have?”. We had a flood of responses.

We can summarize the answers with one common theme. How you answer this depends on who is asking and how you are feeling at that particular point in time.

So many of you gave this advice: You should answer however you feel comfortable (which is not the same every time), with no pressure to disclose everything and if you choose to respond including your heavenly baby/babies you do not have to feel responsible for the other person’s reaction or lack of. Guard your hearts if you choose to share, not everyone understands what your life is like as a loss parent & they may react in a negative or awkward way. It's okay when this happens loss mom, it stings but remember you are not alone in this.

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Lindsey is a loss mom of 2 heavenly babies. We will be sharing a series of her posts. Our next post will be from her husband.

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When there are no words, pictures tell the story of sweet joy, celebration and love that filled our 10 hours with Sophie as we grew to know and love her even more than we could have ever dreamed possible. Those 10 hours were filled with and surrounded by holy moments, that in the coming days I hope to put into words as we have a chance to process together all that God did that weekend. God truly brought to fruition the passage He led me to months ago as I thought and dreamed of Sophie’s arrival.

“Look among the nations and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.” – Habakkuk 1:5

We were filled with wonder and astounded by all the Lord did in the 4 days we were in the hospital. His presence filled that place in incredible ways. And though tears flood our eyes now, we love reflecting on the beautiful moments the Lord gave us with our firstborn daughter, Sophia Kyla Dennis.

For those who wonder whether it is truly worth it to carry a child to term who has little chance of survival outside of the womb, it is worth it beyond what words could say.

Experiencing the death of a loved one is always painful, but there is a special kind of grief associated with the loss of a child. It strikes so powerfully at our hearts reminding us of the truth – the truth we all know but spend much of our lives trying to ignore. Death is an intruder, an enemy, an evil that rips from us the ones we love the most. And when the one that is ripped from us is a child, we are left not only with pain and grief, but with unfulfilled hopes, the broken promise of memories that were never made, and with the sadness of knowing what could have been but never will be. Moreover, the loss of a child may cause us to begin asking really big and overwhelming questions. Is there a God? If there is a God, how could he let something like this happen? Does God care about my baby? Where is my baby now?

Charles Spurgeon once said this about suffering:

It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity.

Those are some of the most sobering words I’ve ever read. A month ago, I could not have known their depth nor their weight. Now I can.

Here is the story of how we lost a daughter, and gained so much more.

This month marks twenty years since our beloved son Paul was born and I am reposting this article from 2014 about him and the song "Held." I am reminded once again that God's ways are not our ways, but we can trust that he will ultimately use all the sorrows in our lives for our joy and for his glory.

Burying my precious baby was devastating. I had no idea how to cope with his sudden unexpected death. True, Paul had been born with a heart problem, but he had survived the critical surgery at birth and was thriving. He’d come home from the hospital at three weeks old, and after a slow start, began gaining weight.

With his winsome smile, easy disposition, and mop of curly dark hair, he delighted us all. He was healthy and beautiful. Even the physician filling in for Paul’s regular cardiologist was so impressed with his progress that he impulsively eliminated most of his heart medications. Paul didn’t need them anymore. He was fine. At first, I was encouraged by the good news. But two days later, Paul was dead. He was only two months old.

I hope this article written by a loss mom is a comfort to other loss moms and their families.

A friend told me about a young couple who had recently lost their baby girl in delivery. The couple was devastated and, though trusting God, felt horribly alone. My friend, knowing I had lost an infant son, asked what I might write to them and couples like them.

I’ve never met you, but I have prayed for you and cried out to God for you. I don’t know exactly how you feel, for no one else can know that, but I will tell you what I do know about loss, about comfort, and about your child’s life. I pray this letter might minister to you in some small way.

Recently I asked the community of loss of Moms on Instagram this question: What was the most loving or thoughtful thing someone did for you after a loss? I know there have been a number of blog posts written on this but its helpful to hear a variety of answers…. Below you will find some of these answers. There are many practical things you can do such as meals & child care but please also consider how to support the mom on an emotional level. One theme that stood out was allowing the mom to talk/cry, asking them about their heavenly baby. The most hurtful thing is pretending nothing happened and staying away from the mom or not asking her how she is and talking about the baby who died.

This response in particular stood out: “There were many wonderful ways friends and family loved me during this time but the one that always sticks out is my friend who said “I don’t know what to say to you. I love you, I want to be here for you in any and every way. But I have no clue what to say and what not to say. I never want to hurt you so if anything I say or do offends or crosses a boundary please tell me.” Her honesty meant the world to me. Especially when I was getting a lot of cliché saying spat at me.”