October is Infant and Pregnancy Loss Awareness Month, and every time I see something about it posted . . .  it stings.  You see, we lost 3 babies between our oldest daughter Mackinzie and middle daughter Adelyn, and it’s taken me a while to be able to talk about my heavenly babies without becoming a hot mess and bursting into tears.

The loss of three pregnancies has challenged my faith and forced me to ask myself grueling questions like, “Are my babies really in Heaven? Or were their lives just cells and chemicals like science says and many told me?” When harmful thoughts would enter my mind, I would speak God’s truth to myself in the form of Psalm 139:13-16 (NKJV), “You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are your works and thy soul knows well. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest places of earth. Your eyes saw my substance, yet BEING UNFORMED, and in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet their were none of them.” Using this scripture as the foundation for healing, I was able to believe without a doubt that my babies’ lives began at conception, mattered to God, and I would see them again. In their earliest moments, God fashioned together their immortal souls, souls meant not for this world but exclusively for eternity, and He chose me as His vessel to help bring them into existence.

The years pass, and I still miss them.  I will always wonder who they would have looked like and whose smile they would have . . . as well as what their personalities would be and if they would have my laugh. And right now, I have tears . . . both sad and happy . . . streaming down my face.  The sad tears are the ones, in my mortal flesh, miss them so desperately.  But the healing that time gives now allows for those sad tears to mix with happy ones, thinking about what is waiting for me one day.

Through the years, God has comforted me and given me a supernatural a sense of peace that the babies I lost were meant for eternity, and the blessing of their lives will one day be blessings that I will receive in Heaven.  Though their little lives on this earth were short, their lives were the catalyst that changed my perspective from existing for things on earth to waiting for eternity . . . awaiting all the wonder that will come.

It has taken me a long time to heal to this point, but my prayer for you, friend, is that God will give you peace as well.  I spent a long time grieving my lost babies.  My grief was mixed with loneliness, worry, depression, and heartbreak.  There were doctors’ visits . . . guilt . . . confusion . . . anger . . . tears . . .

So. Many. Tears.

And fear . . . the fear of the unknown, and the question would I ever hold another baby of my own again?  It took me many years before I could even tell my closest friends about my babies in heaven.  And it took me even longer to realize that all this grief was NORMAL.  I really didn’t have to carry this grief all alone.  But I felt like I was fighting a lonely battle that I didn’t want to vocalize . . . and felt like others didn’t want to hear.  However, after reading others’ stories sharing their own experiences of pregnancy loss, I now really realize how wrong I was to mourn alone.

I wonder why when we lose a baby or struggle with infertility, so many of us feel like we cannot share our pain? Why do we believe that pain it is a burden we have to carry alone?

Releasing the treasures that I so desperately wanted and learning to hand them over to God has been a journey, but the blessing of trudging the trenches for years is that time provides deeper perspective.  I now realize because of the timeline of my lost pregnancies, if any of those babies had been born, my dear Adelyn would have never existed.  Seeing her so full of life, living each day with an abundance of joy, demonstrates to me that God must have mighty purposes in store for her existence.

Deep peace envelopes me when I think about my miscarried little ones’ eternal station; however, my fears now reside in the responsibility of caring for the three children who’ve been entrusted to me on this side of heaven.  Unfortunately, I cannot choose their paths for them. But with the strength that God gives, I will trudge on through the battlefield, doing all that I can to direct their steps correctly which hopefully, one day, will lead to a great family reunion spent with ALL OF MY CHILDREN in eternity.