A Letter to my Friend on the Day She Buries Her Baby

How does one dress for the funeral of their child? How can a parent’s soul bear the weight?

As if the hair, the clothes, the shoes really matter when your perfect babe lay lying in a tiny casket. How do you walk into the bathroom, stare into the mirror and see anything put sorrow.  

You walk in broken, you walk out broken.

There is no wholeness that is given from the vanity in the room of self-care. There is no freedom lent when the tie is tied and the hair is swept up. There is no return of your child just because you've readied your body to bury the body of your sweet one.

If the heart can break into a million pieces, today yours is in ten million pieces. And it’s only just begun to break…

There’s a beating sound...thump…thump…thump and you realize it’s the quiet sound of your own heartbeat and you hear it only because the sound of your breathe is gone. Your breath that has not been released for days. You have held your breathe as you longed to hold your child. Only now, you must breathe because you must stand face to face with the nightmare. It is true. Your holy, perfect child is laid bare in that casket. The flowers surround the innocence and it threatens to break you. That casket steals your tears and your sorrow and a piece of your heart is laid bare with your babe laid bare in that bare, cold casket.

Loved ones file in to the church bringing their gift of hugs and words of love. Children run innocently through the isles unaware of the grief running through the hearts and minds of the adults. You stare at the momentous wishing it wasn’t so. Those pictures can’t be of your child. Those poems haven’t been written for your child. Your heart files the memories of this week and it labels them strangely. The days and hours blur together and you forget the details of the happenings but the memories of your baby your heart does not forget. They are clearly filed away into the deepest places of your raw soul that only you can access. There they will stay forever.

Grief. It’s a strange thing how we can smile and cry at the same time, over the same memory.

But then…you remember…Hope. As your face is turned downward and your heart screams from the ache, your soul breaks free. With an overflowing sweetness, as honey suckle comforts a crying babe, so HOPE comforts your bare heart.

And you become full.

You stand in the mirror not to dress your broken body but to dress and honor the body that carried your baby for months and then with a heroic act of labor-love gave the gift of being born into a world that would never be the same because of what was given that day. That mirror does not stare back with emptiness but with a promise. A promise that those bags under your eyes are evidence of the worth of your child. Your red eyes have flowed freely with the liquid love of that babe so precious. Oh that liquid love. It could save a lost soul or touch a weary heart. And you have given your child the gift of shedding pounds of liquid love.

You clothe your body not to hide but to reveal. In your brave covering you are really taking off the covering. You’re standing brave in the shadow of darkness, with the light covering you and overshadowing even the darkest of earthly horrors and still you stand uncovering - the truth and hope that all is not lost and It Is Well with Your Soul. Though you fight the human desire to run far from the dark-dirt-earth prepared to lay your baby’s body to rest, you stand as one who shares a message the world cannot survive without. A message that says, It Is Well. My souls is not broken, though my heart may be, my soul is held by the unbreakable source of hope and love and resurrection life.

There is no barren soul. For we can all experience the supernatural gift of the birth of hope and beauty from sorrow.

As you cover your body, you are uncovering for the world what it looks like to face the ultimate sorrow with hope resonating so deeply and freely that no dirt can bury that which is meant to be freely given.

As the grave could not hold our Savior so the darkest of sorrow cannot contain the hope of our Savior. As you cling to the resurrection power so you display the resurrected message that It Is Well with Your Soul. And you uncover that message with great bravery and delight because it is what you cling to as you dress your body to bury your child’s earthly body laid bare in a love-box to be covered by the earths glorious surface.  

It is well with your soul.

As you sprinkle dirt upon the grave site of your child, you are uncovering for the world what the mystery of love looks like. The mystery of love that all search for but struggle to find. You are love incarnate. You are hope personified. Your baby has given the world the greatest gift – love. He has given space for the heavens to open and allow the rays of hope to shower down, even upon the darkest of earthly sorrows. Your baby has been the vessel of uncovering that which we need to uncover even if it is through the deepest of pain.

Just as a ship sees the beacon of light from a lighthouse best on the darkest of nights, so searching souls sees the light of hope and love while watching the lighthouse, you, during your darkest of nights.

So dress yourself sweet woman. Prepare your clothes and your hair and your makeup. Give way to even the slightest of desire to look your best. Because today, oh today…

Today you honor the life of your child that gives hope to the world.

Today you dress yourself to uncover the truth that It Is Well with Your Soul.

Today your physical body gives physical evidence to the spiritual hope we have in Jesus.

A letter to my friend who lost her baby on Mother's Day

I write this while grieving the loss of my friend Ashley's son, Macklin August. She had to say goodbye to her sweet baby boy at just 32 weeks pregnant, on Mother's Day. While I believe God will use Macklin's life in mighty ways, mourning the loss is beyond words. I pray you are blessed by these mere word-offerings and that you too may find encouragement in knowing we have the hope of knowing that our babies lost-too-soon are being held by their Heavenly Father.

Ashley, if I could take your pain away, I would do it in a heartbeat. I wish I could do more. I wish I could bear more of your pain-weight. I haven’t stopped crying since I heard the horrifying news. Your son is a treasure and it will be a great joy to dance with him and hold him in Heaven, just as I have held your other babies. What a gift Macklin was given to be called yours. You are the perfect mama for him. I look forward with great excitement to the day you get to see you Father face to face and praise him for holding your son while you were still here on earth. I love you.

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It seems that since I am the one who is coming as a supporter of the grieving, I should have words to say. But today, today is more about silence than anyone wishes it was.

Silence of the perfect newborn baby that should be crying.

Silence of the mother’s breast that should be nursing.

Silence of the celebration of new life to be lived for years to come.

The silence is the hard. It’s what takes the breath away and makes the tears flow. Not because it’s quiet but because the silence is so loud. We hear the quiet even though there’s no sound. Because what was supposed to be is not. A mother’s heart mourns the silence because the sounds are not heard and that’s the most deafening noise of all.

It’s ironic how similar silence and clamor can be.

With all the loving chatter of friends and family coming together to care for physical needs, there’s a quiet, constant beat of grief that never lets us really speak. We chatter, we plan, we organize but our hearts sit still in the numbness of the silence of grief - wishing we could burst forth with a miracle of healing. Like Lazarus was raised from the dead we too ache to witness a miracle. But no bursting forth comes and the silence speaks for itself. Just as our Jesus laid upon the cross as his earthly death was final, so the earthly loss of this still born, holy child is final. No Lazarus miracle for this little babe. This precious life that is no more on this earth. We wonder at the why but we trust in the knowing of who holds him.

The silence speaks. The silence steals. The silence tortures.

 

The church rallies and friends gather. Meals are delivered. Hugs are given. Tears flow freely as words try to form into comfort. Prayers begging for mercy are painfully rushed to the throne of grace. The grieving grabs hold of strangers because loss is felt together. It’s the togetherness that holds together the broken. It’s brokenness that brings together those that belong to each other. Jesus’ body was the brokenness that brought the ultimate togetherness of all who choose to come. The beauty of brokenness is not just in the people it brings but in the wholeness that comes from the gathering. Just as gathering under the name of our savior brings wholeness, so we gather to be the strength, the fabric weaved together to give a blanket of hope and love for you, our dear friends, to rest on. Silently lay upon the strength that is beneath. Because the silence is the pain, but it is also the beauty as we sit in silence together.

Remembering this - one day the pain of silence will be wiped away, just as your babe is experiencing in Heaven now. And on that final day the trumpet will sound and in glorious wonder the silence will be broken and we will rejoice as one under the beauty tones of our savior. We will together, in our wholeness, reunite with the one that was broken for us and the ones we break over and we will have silence no more.

Only rejoicing.

Only joy.

Only reuniting.

Only love.

But in this time, lay back and rest upon the rock eternal that is unmovable. Yes, and lay and rest on the gift He has given of your threaded-together-family who come as strength and love and compassion in your time of desperate need. Rest upon the strength when you have none and need to borrow from the constant source of the blanket beneath you that is built upon the rock above you.

When the due date comes and your sorrow threatens to overtake you, rest upon us.

When in the dead of the dark night hours your mind and body are tortured as your breast longs to nurse your babe, rest upon us.

When the birthday’s and the graduation days and the other milestones come that strangle your throat as your tears scramble from your soul, rest upon us.

When the silence suffocates because you long to hear the pitter-patter of those tiny, innocent feet, rest upon us.

When for no reason at all, grief tears at your soul and your knees buckle and you wish no longer to suffer this way, rest upon us.

The silence is the pain, but we will be the pain-soothers as we rest upon the Rock Eternal to give you a blanket to lay upon. We will hold you. He will hold you as a mother holds her weeping child. You will never be forgotten or forsaken, just as your child is not forgotten or forsaken. He holds us, we hold you, He holds you. It’s the beauty of the togetherness that comes from the brokenness.

You are held.

Your baby is held.

Both by the same Father.

As you sit at the throne of your Father, your child sits at the throne of His Father, only now your child gets to experience the glorious wonder of the physical touch and smell and sense of God himself. No greater gift has anyone been given then to see the glory of God. Just as your wholeness comes from Jesus’ brokenness so your child is experiencing the fullness of wholeness in the midst of His majestic presence.

Rejoice mother. Rejoice not for the silence but in the silence as your child has left the silence behind to embrace the loud, ravishing, full love of Jesus in the fullness of wholeness as He is held by God himself.  

Rejoice! The wholeness is here for your child.

Rejoice! The togetherness will come for you and your child.

Rejoice. For the nearness of the one who gives wholeness is with you.