October

There are many who have written about parents who lose a child. It has often been said that we have a name for a spouse that loses a husband and even a name for a child that loses his parents, but that there is no name for a parent who loses a child. Some say it is because it's not in the natural form of life, that it's something that should never happen. But some would say that it's because a time long ago loss of a child happened all too often to need a special name.

But I would say that it happens more often than you would imagine, even now.

I looked up the numbers but they're so hard to face. It's hard because in one way the numbers are so high, it's hard to imagine that many mothers have lost babies. And then in some ways it's hard because all of a sudden it seems as if the child you lost would only be a number in a tally that someone, somewhere is counting.

So you can look up the numbers if you want, but I want to tell you that these mothers and fathers and families are everywhere.

It's like a secret society that somehow you don't know about until it happens to you. And then people start talking. And then you realize that in your neighborhood, in your Sunday school class, in your office, and even in your very small group of best friends, there are stories of loss.

I don't write this today to make you cry. I don't share the stories of these beautiful mothers to make you tear up and to simply evoke an emotional response. But I write because I want you to know their stories.

Their stories are real. They are not just a number on a page. The loss of their children is not something they simply 'get over.' I want you to see that pregnancy and infant loss is the loss of a child. It's not just the loss of a pregnancy or the loss of the 'baby that would have been' but to many of these mothers they lost someone they had already fallen in love with and will miss every day.

I love these stories because these women know the Lord. I've said many times, especially when people insist that I'm the one who is strong, I've said that I don't know how people do this without the Lord. I am not the strong one. The Lord, He is strong.

I know that it is not the experiences of our life that we should use to interpret God's Word, but it is God's Word that we should use to interpret the experiences of our life. When you lose a child this is essential, because all of a sudden the world falls down and for a moment you aren't sure what to believe. Then you remember what is true.

So I love that the women who wrote these stories spoke of scripture. What else could we cling to but His Truth?

The stories I will share with you these next few days are true. I hope and pray that they somehow bless you. I really have prayed over each of these stories and prayed for the women who wrote them.

It's October. It's Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month and we are telling the stories.