One year ago today I was in between two of the hardest days of my life. The day before I had learned that our son no longer had a heartbeat. The day after, I would deliver him into this world. No cries would fill the room upon his arrival except those of his mother and father. One year ago today, I was lost.

As someone who has struggled with depression and anxiety for most of my adult life, I would be lying if I said there weren’t days I didn’t believe I would survive through the first year. The pain from losing a child, no matter how old, is so deep, so harsh, so all-consuming I thought for sure that I’d just absolutely lose it at some point.

A fellow loss momma recently asked me on one of my hard days “What has Ollie taught you in the last year?” I quickly gave a few of the things that popped into my head but I’ve been pondering that question ever since.

My initial reaction is still probably the truest thing I’ve learned since losing him: I am capable of surviving the unsurvivable. The amount of times I’ve been told “I can’t imagine” in the last year is far higher than I ever thought it would be. Many are scared to put themselves in the shoes of a mother who has had a child die, to even imagine for a second the pain associated with that. I don’t blame them. But saying I am capable of surviving would be an incomplete truth without one thing: God. Without His grace, His faithfulness, His sovereignty…..I don’t think I’d be typing this.

About a month after losing Ollie, my small group at church started the study “It’s Not Supposed To Be This Way” by Lysa TerKeurst. It is an absolutely beautiful study on living through parts of life that “aren’t supposed to be this way” and finding God in the life between the two gardens, Original Eden and Restored Eden.

Before losing Ollie, I don’t believe I truly felt the tension of living life between the two gardens. Life had it’s hard days, as it does, but the pull towards heaven wasn’t one I experienced regularly. I went to church, I praised Jesus, I lived my life.

Since losing Ollie, the tension between the two has been like that of a rubber band pulled as far apart as it can stand, right before it snaps. The weight of living in a fallen world is heavy and daily I am reminded that there is a new, restored Eden on the horizon. I realize daily that it’s not supposed to be this way. Those same songs of worship now have a deeper meaning to me. The prayers I pray fall on the ears of not some distant far off God, but the ears of the God who walks beside me through the deepest, darkest moments of my life.

He shows up in the mess of this broken world and draws us close.

He turns our broken moments into restoration and peace.

He takes the moments when I feel like I can’t take one more step and turns them into my testimony.

I’m not trying to paint a picture that this year has been full of rainbows and unicorns. It has without a doubt been the hardest year of my life. But God. I survived because, as the quote below says: God takes my guttural cries of pain and is turning them into beautiful melodies. I’m pretty sure we’re only on the first line of the song, but I know He’ll finish what He started.

He always does.

Ask any grief-stricken mother. Our answers are all the same.

“What are you scared of?”

That our babies will be forgotten.

It really doesn’t matter if our babies only lived a few days, a few weeks or 50 years….we’re all scared that somehow their memory will fade away over the years. That future generations will build their family trees and there will be no mention of them.

I’m also terrified that I’ll forget. Not that I’ll forget him though. He is a part of me the same way the moon and stars are part of the night sky.

I’m scared I’ll forget the little things about Ollie.

The way he danced in our first ultrasound and would suddenly freeze when the dopplar was right on him. “Stage fright!” we called it.

The way he fluttered in my belly and caught me by surprise the first time as I was just sitting down at my desk one morning.

The way he was stubborn when we were trying to find out his gender and the way he sucked his thumb and kicked his foot up on his knee like he couldn’t be comfier.

The way his little hands looked liked miniature versions of his daddy’s when he was born or how he had the tiniest amount of peach fuzz on his head, so tiny we couldn’t tell what color it was.

The way he smelled of lavender after I put a few drops on his knit cradle.

The way his little feet were so long and the way his little nose looked like just like all my nieces and nephews did when they were born.

The way it felt to hold a piece of my heart outside my body.

I never want to forget the little things because it’s the only memories I have to hold on to. This is why I speak of him so often, even when I can tell it makes other uncomfortable. Because if it’s how I keep his memory alive.

It’s how I mother him from this side of the grave.

It’s how I remember I’m a mother too.

“How do I trust a God that let my baby die?”

It’s a question thats rattled around in my head for the past few weeks and to be honest, I don’t know the answer.

I’m struggling to tell up from down in my grief lately and wondering where God plays in to it all. I think I’ve moved into a different phase of grief and it’s really caught me off guard. The first few months I feel as though I was grieving losing my son. Now I feel like I’m also grieving the things he’s missing…like being spoiled by his grandparents, playing with his cousins, being rocked to sleep in his momma’s arms.

I’ve found my emotions getting bigger and heavier to carry. I already struggled with anxiety and depression before I lost Ollie. Now those things are amplified by grief. In February, I went in to “maintenance mode” with my therapist (just going as needed, instead of regularly scheduled) but this morning I had to reach out to her and get back on the schedule. It’s all becoming so hard to sort through and thats probably a sign I need a little help working through it.

I guess I’m just saying all this to say: I don’t know how to trust God right now and I think thats okay. Through the years, I’ve learned He is trustworthy and I know He is. I’ve spent all of my life in church. I was raised to trust God and know that He is holy and sovereign. I knew it so much that I honestly didn’t think about it most days. “Let Go and Let God!” as the trendy little saying goes. Well, I let go…and the ending wasn’t what I pictured. I find myself now holding tightly to the illusion of control in my life and scared to release it to anyone, even God, for fear of more pain, fear of an ending that I didn’t sign up for or a sacrifice I did not volunteer to make.

I do have my moments where I feel God near and know He’s hearing my heart and loving me through it but if I’m being honest, those moments aren’t as often as I’d like lately. Most of the time I’m a Martha….Running out of my house towards Jesus as he approaches and screaming “If only you had been here….you could have saved my son!” Just as Martha said about her brother Lazarus. I’m just a mother begging God to not let her son’s death be for nothing. Begging that her son won’t be forgotten. Begging that this is not the end of her story. Hoping that this is not her only experience of Motherhood. Praying that her heart will one day be healed.

Begging. Hoping. Praying.

There are days I can wrap my grief up into a pretty little package with a bow and eloquent words. Then there are days (nights? Mornings? Who knows…I can hear the birds chirping with the sunrise and I’ve yet to lay my head down to rest tonight.) like today.

Sunday is International Bereaved Mother’s Day, a day I didn’t even know existed until recently and wish I didn’t have a reason to know about it. It’s also the anniversary of when Andrew & I found out we were expecting our first baby. I feel like I’ve lived a thousand years since that time last year when I saw those two pink lines and the word “pregnant” on the tests.

My grief isn’t wrapped up with a bow lately. It’s painful and heart wrenching and just when I think I’ve gathered all the pieces again to place them neatly in a box, a bomb explodes and they go flying in all different directions again. I’ve been struggling to put words to it all, leaving this page empty and quiet because I’ve not been able to put that bow on it and make it perfect for the world to see.

Mostly, my heart just aches for my baby. A deep, chest tightening, heavy shouldered ache. An ache thats easier to hide than share because it feels too heavy, too personal, too much for others to hear about. I don’t want to be “that girl” that always talks about her dead baby. I’ll be the first to admit that I probably would’ve written a bereaved mother’s grief off before all of this. I would have thought “You’re young! You can have another!” and probably would have thought it was time they stopped talking about it so much. I didn’t understand. How could I?

My brain knows all the right things to say right now. In fact, the phrases about God making all things new and beauty from ashes are rattling around in my head as I type. And yes, I know it to be true. But there are times I wish my ashes didn’t have to exist. Couldn’t He just make beauty from nothing? Why did my baby have to be part of my ashes? I suppose that’s one of those things I won’t know the answer to on this side of heaven. And by the time I get to heaven, the why won’t matter because Ollie will be in my arms again.

I guess all I’m really saying is I miss my son so much lately that I can hardly find words to express it. I’ll share a glimpse here or there on social media but try to keep the sadness talk to a minimum to avoid driving people crazy with my grief….and mostly because it’s my fight as a mother to fight. Like Jacob wrestled with God, I too feel like I’m wrestling Him in my grief and right now it’s ugly. I probably have a theoretical black eye with a broken bone or two….or maybe just a really bruised ego. Losing a child will humble you pretty quickly like that. It pins you to the ground as soon as the words “fight!” are spoken by the ref.

To be honest, I didn’t start writing this post with a direction or story in mind. It’s early morning and my brain can’t seem to get my thoughts organized or settled enough to get some rest so I thought that getting them out of my head may help. My eyes feel a little heavy so maybe it did. Time to attempt a visit into dream world. Maybe I’ll see my Ollie there.

Losing Ollie has rocked my relationship with God in a very real way. Grief in and of itself is a roller coaster filled with so many ups and downs that it can make your head spin. Some days it feels like I just rode a kiddie coaster and I can still keep my footing. Other days I feel like I’ve been riding a roller coaster that spins and flips and turns for 10 hours straight. I would say my faith has been the latter of those two in this journey.

In the immediate days after losing Ollie, I was confident that God had a plan. Andrew & I sat on the couch in the hospital room a few hours before being released and talked about how sure we were of God’s faithfulness and how we just knew God was going to do something BIG with Ollie’s story. What I didn’t realize then was that God doing something big didn’t exclude me from the pain. I naively thought that because God was sovereign, I would be able to skip the part of grief where it absolutely shattered me and go straight to the part where I can praise Him and tell Ollie’s beautiful story.

When life moved on, we buried our son, we returned to our jobs, the meal trains stopped and Ollie still was dead, I was wrecked. You see, I knew I’d lost Ollie, that was clear. But the reality of living a life without him, that is what wrecked me. I found myself sitting in my therapist office in tears because I’d just realized in the past few days of my grief journey that this was permanent, that I would live the rest of my life without my son. Through the sobs I said “….but that just seems like such a long time.” The idea of growing old terrified me because I could barely handle the grief in that moment, I couldn’t imagine carrying this grief for 40, 50, 60 more years. I was beginning to realize that God being faithful, true and good didn’t mean my life would be without pain or that my grief would some how be easier to handle….and I was angry. I felt betray by a God I trusted.

After that realization hit, I could barely stand to think about God. I was angry that He allowed this pain to be so heavy. I was livid that He allowed my son to die. I found myself not only grieving for my son, but grieving for the life before I lost him. Grieving for a life where I believed God was good and that He had my life planned into a beautiful, pain-free story. Grieving a life where God was my golden calf that I had carved into the picture perfect description of what I wanted in a god. Not to get ahead of the story, but I am so glad that is not the God I serve. I am glad that the God I serve does not lower himself to the limitations of what my human mind can think up as the perfect life for me.

This phase of grief has lasted the longest for me. Although I’ve had a few scattered days of relief where God has reassured me He was near and I was loved, it wasn’t until the past two weeks that I’ve felt that veil lift more.

Every Wedneday, some sweet sisters in Christ and I meet for a Bible study. About two weeks ago, our former teacher who has been out for surgery stopped by to catch up. As she told us all her life updates, we somehow got to talking about God’s faithfulness. She said something that proceeded to tumble around in my brain over the next week or so….Anticipate God’s Faithfulness. I allowed that thought to linger and found myself going back to it daily. I didn’t realize then that that little seed was beginning to chip away the wall I’d put up between me & God.

About a week later, I was catching up on the book we’re doing in that Wednesday night meet up called “It’s not supposed to be this way” by Lysa Terkeurst. The book is, in short, about living the life between two gardens (Eden & The Restored Eden, Heaven). Lysa is so very real about her journey and the pain she’s walked through. The particular part that opened my eyes that day was an explanation of a scripture I’ve read a thousand times. In fact, I long proclaimed it to be my life verse. “For I know the plan that I have for you. Plans to prosper you, and not harm you” (Jeremiah 29:11, Katie Edition)

In all my times reading or hearing these verses, I’ve never known the context of it. I’d read it through my golden calf eyes of God being a god that gives me the good stuff in life, but spares me the pain. That’s not what this chunk of scripture is about at all.

In the verses leading up to this, God is addressing the children of Israel who are being led into captivity by Babylon for 70 years. Ouch. God’s chosen people? Seventy YEARS? I can only imagine that the Israelites felt a lot like I did when I realized I had to live the rest of my life without Ollie. Angry, betrayed and hurting. But in the same breath that the pain is spoken into existence, God says this:

^{“For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you, declares the Lord}

Jeremiah 29:10-14b

How’s that for a love letter from God? Yes, there will be pain. Yes, there will be loss & pain. Yes, there will be seasons of captivity & grief. But I know the plan I have for you. Plans to give you a future and a hope. I will be found by you.

Phew. That’ll preach.

I’m thankful for a lot in the journey but this week I’m thankful for this: God is patient and a gentleman. He didn’t force His way into my grief. He stood patiently beside me while I hurled insults at him. He didn’t turn His back, He has a plan far greater than mine, one that includes hope, freedom and finding Him in the midst of all the pain. I didn’t fall through the cracks. I’m not forgotten while He tended to other things going on in the world.

HOPE.

One of my favorite Christmas songs has always been Oh Holy Night. I vividly remember singing this in a Christmas choir in high school and getting goosebumps during the first time we nailed that “Fall on your knees” crescendo. (Don’t be impressed. It’s literally the only musical term I know and I’m not even sure I’m using it right but it sounds good there. And I was only in choir because it was required at some point. I sing about as well as a turkey.)

Regardless, the song has always been one that brings my heart back to the calm of Christmas in the hustle & bustle of it all. This Christmas season, I’ve found myself humming it over and over. The line that has caught me on more than one occasion this time around is “A thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.”

Let me tell you guys something….I am weary this Christmas. I miss my boy, I don’t understand why God allowed this to happen, and I’m absolutely exhausted from it all. I wish I could say I’ve somehow valiantly risen above grief and that nothing triggers me anymore but the truth is I cry way more often than I’d ever want anyone to know, I’ve started having nightmares where I relive Ollie’s birth and losing him over and over on repeat and sometimes all I want is to hold a baby, ANY baby, just in hopes that my arms won’t feel so incredibly empty for a bit.

The marriage therapist Andrew & I are going to help us walk this path together asked me something at our last session that has helped me reframe all the pain a bit. I was complaining (go figure) about how much I wish the part where it hurts this bad would just be over. He paused and asked me “Well, was he worth it?” and, without a hesitation, my answer was yes.

I would go through the heartbreaking ultrasound where we found out he was gone just to have him in my belly again. I would go through labor and birth his still body again just to be able to see him one more time. I would cry every tear ten million times over just to hold him for five more minutes. I would do every single second of this horrible journey again just for him. And so I keep moving forward. Because grief is the price I’m willing to pay if it means I had five and a half beautiful months of knowing him.

“…a thrill of hope…”

Even if Christmas has been hard to handle right along side grief, I truly believe it would be harder without it. That thrill of hope… I cling so desperately to it at times. Christmas is the reminder that there is hope in the midst of our grief. It’s the beginning of the story that reminds me I’ll see my boy again one day. So while Christmas is bittersweet now, it’s also more hope filled that it has been for me in the past. This year, I am part of that weary world that is rejoicing over Christ’s birth. I sing a hallelujah because His birth means my salvation. His birth means hope.

So this Christmas, if you see me smiling with tears in my eyes, take it for what it is….A weary momma all in her feels rejoicing that this hard season means she’ll hold her baby boy again one day.

One of the first resources I discovered when the dust had settled a bit after losing Ollie was “The Joyful Mourning“, a podcast for grieving mothers. I put some headphones in and turned on one of the episodes to listen to while I got some things done around the house. I didn’t make it too far in before I was reaching for my phone to write down notes. Ashlee Proffitt was speaking so much truth into my soul from one angel momma to another.

One of the first things I wrote in my notes was this:

“Celebrating a good thing in life and mourning a hard thing in life are not mutually exclusive. They do not have to cancel each other out.”

Ashlee Proffitt, The Joyful Mourning Podcast

That theme has seemed to be a common thread in life since losing Ollie. I’ve heard many times that for women struggling with infertility or pregnancy loss, seeing other women pregnant or having a baby can be difficult. While I understood that as much as I could at the time, it wasn’t until I lost Ollie that I realized how truly difficult those things are.

More often then not, when you get pregnant, you also find out a friend (or two, or three) is expecting too. It’s a special and fun thing to experience together. You compare due dates, guess genders and talk about nursery decor. No one ever expects that one of those babies will never take a breath outside it’s mother’s womb….that one will be burying their baby while the other paints their nursery.

All of this to say that God has been teaching me an awful lot about coexisting with grief and joy. I do not hate or resent every pregnant woman. In fact, the friends that were also carrying babies while I carried Ollie will forever hold a special place in my heart. Their babies will be a constant beautiful reminder to me of Ollie and the joy I felt while pregnant with him. It will be such an honor to see them grow over the years, to hold them, to love them and pray over them. That is the joy of it all.

But the grief still shows up…and that’s okay. I’m learning that the same tears that fall in joy of your friend having her long desired baby can also fall five minutes later for missing your son. The happiness when someone announces they’re pregnant can switch to sadness because you’ve barely learned to walk into the nursery without tears. One can exist right along side the other and I don’t have to feel guilty about it. I can celebrate a friend and grieve the loss of my son in the same minute, if thats what is needed.

Is it easy? No…mainly because you never know how those days will hit you. Some days are easy, others are impossible and there is no way to predict or control when that wave of grief will decide to hit like a tsunami. You just have to take it in stride. I still haven’t learned to grieve….does anyone ever, really? I’m just doing my best to let both joy and grief exist and take up their space when needed. Some days I balance that perfectly and other days it all falls shattered on the floor but I suppose that is human. All that matters is that I keep picking up the pieces and moving forward.