Missing Her

This continues the moments that made up our lives for the weeks following Hannah's birth.  We are doing so very well now, but I wanted to share what it was like in the days and weeks after we lost our girl. Here they are.

If you'd like to read more about the story of our Hannah Grace click here.

January 9, 2014

I think the hardest part sometimes is that I honestly genuinely with my whole heart and soul miss my sweet girl. I think that when people see someone experience the loss of a baby they ‘never met’ that they think it’s something that happened. That it’s a sad day to remember, a tragedy, or an event to be mourned. 

But it's more than that. We did meet her. We did know her. She lived inside me in my body and so much in my heart for forty weeks. That sweet girl was a part of our family.  And so we don’t mourn a sad day, a ‘horrible tragedy,’ or some thing that happened to us. But I cry because I miss my daughter that I knew, that I carried, that I cared for, that knew us. An event didn’t happen to us. We didn't just have a stillbirth, we had a baby. We lost our daughter.

I did not know I could love someone so much so very quickly without any reason or circumstance. I didn’t love her because she was kind or generous or loved me back. I just loved her, like only a mother or a father can love their own child. A literal part of me died, my own flesh.

So I think it’s okay to cry. Because I’ll miss her every day for the rest of my life. She’s not something that happened in the past, she’s my daughter that lives today with the Lord, but whom I long to know and miss so very badly. That’s why although our next baby will be a blessing if we are so blessed, but it won’t ‘fix the problem’ because my baby girl Hannah still lives apart from me and my heart will always long for her.

A sentence in I Will Carry You by Angie Smith left me in tears yesterday. It is the most difficult of my thoughts. It displays how selfish I am, but it is the truth. It’s a question to the Lord, 

“Will you tell her all about me and what I would have been to her? Will you show her glimpses of how we would have lived life together?” 

And I know the truth is that she doesn’t need to know my love now, for it pales in comparison to the complete love she now sees in the Father. She doesn’t need me anymore, she doesn’t need my love, she doesn’t need my comfort, my care. She doesn’t even need glimpses into our ‘would be’ life together, because she finds everything she needs in the Father’s presence. 

Although that is my comfort daily, that she is with the Lord, it also hurts most of all. In some crazy way it's like when your daughter goes to her first day of school without you, when your daughter moves away to college, when your daughter walks down the aisle to become more a wife and less a daughter, but in a way that encompases all of those moments and more. My little girl doesn’t need me anymore, and I’m left here needing her so badly.

Oh, a mother’s love.

And then I think about how much I wanted her to love me. And I see such a clear picture of our Lord.  He does not need my love, but he longs for it. When I think about how much I wanted Hannah's love, I can't even imagine how much more he wants the love of his children.

The Lord is good.