And just like that, we stumbled, we bravely charged, we dragged our bodies, and ultimately we survived an impossible 5 years.

I like to think God innately created us to
a) make sense of the things around us and
b) find connection as we move through life. Infant loss has made these 2 things nearly impossible. If I am being honest (which I always am) I still find myself in disbelief that this happened to us. US! Not a horrible story about someone I am twice removed from.
Me.
I lost my precious child.
She died.
And I couldn’t stop it.

I am forever, in my head trying to make sense out of utter nonsense. This is not how things ought to be.

I live in, and raise my kids in this home where I watched as a swarm of paramedics and firefighters tried to bring Eden back to us. I pass the spot on the floor in front of our atrium doors where I last held her body before passing her to Nate. Some days it’s like the floorboards from the Tell-tale Heart by Poe, driving me mad. Others, it’s Holy ground.
Revered.

Detached, I still ask… did this really happen to us?

Connection. We are made for connection and in grief, child loss particularly, your loss is everyone’s greatest fear. And if they acknowledge and affirm the depths of your hellish pain, they slip into my world for a brief moment. The world where lovers leave, babies die and not everything “happens for a reason.” No one wants to live in my world.

My loss and my saddness are a reminder to all who come near, a beacon of inconvenient truth – that you are not in control. You never were. You never will be.
And as evangelicals, we say we put our kids very lives at the feet of God and his abundant mercy. But we don’t.
We don’t actually do that.
That would be reckless.

We have a cultural and religious script we recite with ease, when the sun is shining. But when the sun sets, when it counts, so many of these hollow consolations, these promises, (in my experience) they lose their meaning, and hold no comfort.

Angry, I still ask, why do I feel so alone?

Because there is beauty in my world. Honest beauty. The kind of beauty that counts. The kind of beauty that is scary but you can’t look away, because it is real and pure.

It is only because of our fragility that makes us so precious. We cannot overlook that side of love.

The world comes together in spring, as a collective we marvel at cherry blossoms. We don’t congregate to admire a cedar. Cedar is always green. By nature we don’t appreciate the things we expect will always remain.
But cherry blossoms, they die young. We cherish and admire the things we fear we may not have forever. We appreciate them in the shadow of their future absence. We love them because of their fragility.

In my world, I love with the intensity and intention of cherry blossom season. Not because I think my children will die young. But because one did. And there can be a unique and poignant beauty in that.

It is bigger than me, and it requires my surrender. When we learn about love, we experience God.

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed – not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence – continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his purpose.”
Phil 2:12