About

Row after row of people filled the auditorium that morning. A sea of women in colorful dresses and men in golf shirts faced the sprawling stage and waited expectantly. A pastor strode to center stage and welcomed everyone. He asked all of the moms to stand so they could be honored and applauded. It was Mother’s Day and I had just lost our baby five days earlier. 

My heart pounded and my mind screamed, “I am a mom, too. My baby is just in Heaven.” I wanted to stand in front of this sea of humanity to acknowledge my motherhood, but I didn’t have the courage to stand. My heart grieved our loss as I gripped my husband, Tim’s, hand. We had just lost our second baby and it felt like our hopes and dreams of ever having a family had died as well.

When we began trying to have a family, it never crossed our minds that we would struggle with infertility or pregnancy loss. I didn’t know anyone in my circles who had experienced pregnancy loss so we approached this season with expectant anticipation.

The first year of trying we weren’t too concerned, but as we hit the year mark we began wondering:  Why is it taking so long? 

 When I finally got a positive result on a pregnancy test after one and half years of trying, I took two more tests to be sure. After three positive tests, we believed the results—I was pregnant! God had answered our prayers! 

Two weeks later I started bleeding. I knew something was wrong, but I thought: Maybe the bleeding would stop? My stomach turned into knots the longer the bleeding went. It never stopped and I lost my first baby. 

Tim and I cried together as we held each other. We told our families and they grieved with us. I took one day off work and then I went back into my normal life. I didn’t fully process or grieve what I had just lost. I pushed down the pain and wanted life to return to normal because normal is comfortable.

A few months later my mom sent me a note asking for forgiveness for not being there for me during my pregnancy loss (which I readily forgave because I felt like she was there for me). In the note she mentioned when you “lost the baby,” and the loss hit me in a way it hadn’t before. I realized I had been seeing it as a “miscarriage” rather than our baby had died. 

We pursued medical testing to discover the cause of our infertility. We underwent testing and everything seemed fine except I had a grapefruit-size fibroid tumor in my uterus which could affect implantation. My doctor recommended surgery to have it removed. Seven months after our first pregnancy loss I had the surgery to remove the fibroid tumor. 

After the recovery time, I started to hope: Would I get pregnant again? Would the baby make it to full-term this time?

Our infertility shook our worlds, but also the worlds of our family and friends who loved us and knew we wanted kids so much. However, one of the hardest things for me in this season were comments from well-meaning family and friends encouraging us to pray more and have more faith. Someone said, “If I were you, I would be on my knees begging God every day for a child.” 

Another friend exhorted us “God answers prayers of faith and you have to have unwavering faith.” I struggled with the validity of my friends’ comments because I was asking God for a child and I was trusting Him, but so have people throughout history who have never been able to have biological children. 

Still I wondered: Was God not giving me a child because I wasn’t trusting Him enough? Was my lack of faith the problem?  Was it my fault? 

During these months, at times I trusted God and at times I wrestled with: Is God holding out on us? Can He be trusted? I believed He could give us children, but would He? Would I believe His heart is good even if He never gave us biological children? Month after month passed without any signs of pregnancy.

Finally, a year and a half after my surgery I found out I was pregnant again. Giggles of joy bubbled up inside of me— God had given us the gift of a child! 

I went to a doctor’s appointment a couple weeks later and saw the baby on the ultrasound. A little life was growing inside of me! The doctor said I wasn’t very far along (I thought I was a couple weeks further). I anticipated a lot of waiting and trusting ahead. He also said my progesterone had dipped from a level taken a couple days earlier. 

I begged God: “Lord, please bring that level back up. Please protect this baby and give him or her a chance at life.”

The next week we got a call from our doctor who had seen some recent bloodwork and said the pregnancy wasn’t looking good. Later that night I started to cramp and bleed. It was really happening. I was losing the baby. With broken hearts Tim and I held each other and sobbed. Almost four years of trying to have a baby and still our home remained empty. 

This pregnancy loss was harder than the first. We grieved the loss of the child, who he or she was and could become. We grieved the loss for our family and we grieved the loss of our dream of having children. 

I struggled to trust God. I read the verse “As for God, His way is perfect (Psalm 18:30) and I wrestled with that truth: How could God’s way be perfect in this? His ways did not feel perfect at that moment. How could I rectify the fact that God’s way is perfect and we live in a broken world? There were no easy answers.

A few days after our baby died Tim and I did a small ceremony by a river to honor our baby. We cried, read letters to our baby, and prayed together. We threw flowers into the river and found a little healing in that quiet ceremony.

Mother’s Day approached and that holiday lingered on my mind. I knew it would be a hard day. I felt like “I am a mom” and “Tim is a dad” even though our children were in Heaven. At church on Mother’s Day they always have the moms stand and honor them. That Sunday I longed to stand as a mom, but I knew people wouldn’t understand, as I shared earlier.

God did give us a gift during this season. Our pastor, Andy Stanley, was in the middle of a message series called, “Faith, Hope, and Luck.” I felt like God made this message series for me. The Sunday after our baby died, Andy’s message challenged me to put my faith in what God has promised.

Andy posed the question: We can ask God for anything, but has God promised to give us everything we ask for? I knew intimately the answer to that question was “no.” If He can be trusted to keep His promises, what has He actually promised? Andy taught God hasn’t promised to deliver us from every hard thing, but He has promised to deliver us through them when we come to Him. 

God will give us mercy and grace to sustain us through our hard times. Even more, Jesus understands our suffering. He knows what it is like to grieve (John 11:35). Would I trust Him to keep His promise to see me through this pain?

My heart was broken. My dreams were shattered. But that May I decided I did not want to have circumstantial faith—a faith that hinges or leans on circumstances. Circumstantial faith is fragile because unexpected pain is a regular part of life. I decided my faith would be in Someone who does not change, a rock, Jesus. 

I would never know why we lost the baby. I would never know why we couldn’t have children, but I would trust Jesus was with me and He would carry me through the grief and crushing disappointment.

Over time, my heart began to heal.  A quiet, underlying sadness replaced the weight of grief. I journaled, cried out to the Lord, and read Scripture. I began to see God alone is the Creator of life. I cannot make life, no matter how hard I try. God helped me to see I had believed the lie that our infertility and pregnancy losses were my fault. I didn’t know why they were happening, but they weren’t my fault and I couldn’t change the outcome. 

God was healing my heart from the inside out. I knew our babies were in Heaven and one day I would meet them in person. I felt sad our babies never had an opportunity at living life, but my grief no longer consumed me. I sensed God’s gentle, healing touch in my heart. I knew He was with me, He loved me, and He would carry me through.

We continued to ask God for a child  and nothing happened. Eight months after I lost our second baby I finally decided to go back to the doctor to consider options. At that doctor’s appointment, I will never forget when the nurse walked in and said, “Did you know you were pregnant?” My eyes widened, my jaw dropped, and my heart leaped! Pregnant!! 

I had a doctor’s appointment a few weeks later, and we heard the baby’s heartbeat! That sound was sweetness itself!  

I also wanted to crawl in my heavenly Father’s lap and cry because I saw what the ultrasound technician wrote—fibroid tumors consumed my uterus. Something in my heart started to detach. I began to feel numb, but I wanted to hope. I had gotten pregnant with all of those fibroids—couldn’t this baby make it?

At my 10-week ultrasound, our eyes widened at the sight of a little baby with arms, legs, and a good heartbeat. We even saw one of the baby’s arms move. 

I gave birth to Audrey in September of that year—a beautiful, healthy baby girl. She was worth the wait. The most helpful thing anyone had said during our infertility journey was God has one sperm and one egg to make your child. My friend spoke wisely—God’s timing was perfect! Audrey was our priceless gift from God.

After we had Audrey, God gave us the great gift of Trevor 23 months later. When Audrey was 3 years old and Trevor was 16 months, I got pregnant. I went to a doctor’s appointment thinking all was well. We were shocked to discover the baby did not have a heartbeat. I had no idea anything was wrong. I had thought the season of pregnancy loss was behind us. I wrote to God in my journal:

“I know your plan is perfect, but right now I wonder how? How can it be perfect that our baby died? Death is not how it was meant to be.” 

Death is a thief. God did not create the world with death—Adam and Eve brought sin and death into the world when they sinned in the Garden of Eden. Every time someone dies, whether young or old, it feels unnatural. We know this is not the way it is supposed to be.

After we lost our third baby, God gave us two more precious gifts—Caleb and Daniel. The kids are all 2 to 2.5 years apart, so now our house is full of lots of life, noise, nerf bullets, Star Wars Legos, dirty baseball uniforms, and ballet shoes.

We have four children on earth and three in Heaven. Years after the three babies went to Heaven, we felt led to name them. When I get to Heaven I want to call them by name and hold them tight. One day I will meet Aaron, Josiah, and Julia and discover who they are for all eternity.