I can't believe its been ten years.
But I look around me and the signs are there. Four loud, sweet, messy, healthy boys are running through the halls of our home with their shirts off playing tackle football... inside. We painted Christmas ornaments just this week and the boys knew to make an "H" ornament for their big sister Hannah even though they never got to meet her. They're old enough to remember her story and old enough to know how to write the letter H. Years surely have passed.
And this year, I have a little something for you as we approach Hannah's tenth birthday.
If you're new here, ten years ago my husband Kyle and I were expecting our first baby. Before she was born, she died. In the throws of grief I felt the need to write about everything that had happened, everything the Lord was doing, and everything I was feeling. I took to this little hobby blog as so many of us had back then and I started publishing what I was writing. Then it was my way to tell her story, our story, and to answer the question everyone was asking, “how can you go on?” The response to our story was incredible, I think the authenticity of my writing spoke to pregnancy loss in a way many had not heard before. I believe the Lord was able to use my words to convey what hope looked like in an impossible circumstance.
The years have gone by and I’ve learned and grown a lot. But the words I wrote continue to minister to people in the wake of their own loss. Friends and family continue to ask for the link to share our story when those near to them experience loss. Dear friends who grieved with us ten years ago, have found their way back to the blog posts after experiencing their own loss, saying that those words they'd read so long ago now resonated in their hearts again.
So for Hannah’s tenth birthday, here they are. The written words from blog posts now in audio form, in my own voice. Hoping that they may be more easily shareable as the technology of the world changes. Praying that they still may provide true comfort to those who experience loss and provide an inside look into loss for their loved ones.
If you'd like to listen along you can find the recorded stories as a podcast on Apple Podcasts. The show is called A Hint of the Hess House and the initial story will release all at once in 6 episodes. Eventually I'd love to add future episodes containing audio of the grief posts that followed Hannah's story, but that's only a dream for now.
Apple Podcasts: A Hint of the Hess House Podcast
If you'd like to read the stories, simply follow this link to the Hannah Grace page on this blog. You can read the initial parts of the story and you can also find the grief posts further down on that same page already published.
