In June of 2025 when we lost our first daughter I remember people telling me with time it gets easier, as if time heals everything. Living in the last 12 months of back to back loss I learned time doesn’t heal a thing, arguably time guts me more. Each month my mind instantly knows the ages my daughters would have been if they were here. I would have a joyous 6 month old daughter splashing in water with her big brothers or I would have been so close to welcoming a summer baby. While time doesn’t heal but learning to live with grief does. Letting joy and grief find a place in your day to day as if it has the right to. There is a verse in the book of James that says “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many” Not just joy, but pure joy. Wow! if that doesn’t question your faith I’m not sure what does. How can we consider it pure joy when we have to go to funeral homes to pick out urns for our babies? While I’m not sure, I am certain of one thing. There is great joy to be found in Christ. While we weep and plea our desperate cries to just be pregnant with the baby we lost for one more day, or to hold our baby in our arms for one more hour. Jesus meets us in our suffering and there is joy in that friends. 

Back in February when we got Naomi’s diagnoses I felt a sadness I quite hadn’t felt before. Loosing a baby just months prior and we got hit with a life threatening diagnosis’s for our daughter. There’s no pain I could compare knowing the baby girl in my womb likely wasn’t going to make it there has been so much grief and sorrow in such a short season. I want to share with you what couldn’t compare, It was His joy not because our circumstances were joyful they were gutting, but because the joy in our Savior was felt like we had never experienced. The joy of our community surrounding us, the joy of our daughter, the joy of the living miracle she was and is, the joy I had carrying her, the joy I felt in a room birthing her, and holding her. In a hospital room that held no life, held joy. Through Gods kindness there it was, pure joy as we faced trails of many. Carrying a baby who wasn’t going to make it past birth was extremely difficult but there was so much joy in knowing God chose us to carry such a gift He is sovereign over her life and we simply felt so blessed being hers.

This last year has been marked by grief rather than joy yet grief is the very thing where I have found a new joy in Christ and the hope and pure joy we have in heaven. Many weeks, days, and months have been spent lamenting my deepest sorrows but praising Him for His unfailing goodness. It’s crying loud cries to Him that I miss our daughters while being filled with gratitude for their incredible lives. It’s holding joy and sorrow in the same breath. On the second half of the verse it says “because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” when we cast our burdens to Christ in our days of deep sorrow we will lack nothing, there’s so much grief in our life but in Christ joy is abundant. He ensures us of his promises. Theres a beautiful hymn called be still my soul. One of the lyrics says” Be still my soul thy best, thy heavenly friend through thorny ways leads to a joyful end”. What a beautiful image Christ has displayed for us, through our life altering, grief filled, and faith testing trials of many leads us to a joyful end. In Christ there is a joyful end, a promise He so willingly fulfilled for us. Though we weep here on earth there is hope in the morning through Jesus. The hymn goes on to say “When we shall be forever with the Lord, When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone, Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored”. Our sorrows will be forgotten. Our joy will be restored. There’s no better news. 

Thank you Jesus!