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The purpose of this space for the coming weeks or months...
When I set this blog up in February, I planned to use it as a place to review children’s books and share ways to teach scriptural truths through literature. I also thought it might be a place to share articles I’d published with different women’s ministries, giving all my writing a central home.
But that was before Garret and I received a devastating diagnosis for our third baby, who is due August 2, in March.
Since then, another purpose for this blog has been taking form in the back of my mind. I ignored it at first because I thought it would be too painful to write about. But the part of me that wants to fully embrace this journey, both the grief and the joy, and have as much as I can to commemorate our baby’s time here on earth has won out.
Additionally, we’ve been so humbled and are so grateful for the many loved ones who are supporting us on spiritual, emotional, and practical levels. If you are here, we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. This has not been fun news to share and we consider it a mark of deepest love that you would want to journey alongside us in this. It’s not an exaggeration to say that many of you have been God’s love on earth to us in these hardest few weeks of our lives.
We hope this blog will also serve the practical purpose of keeping everyone informed of our journey with this precious third child of ours. We’re realizing quickly that we’re not able to keep everyone informed the way we would like to…we’re simply too exhausted and too sad to keep telling things over and over. This seemed like the best way to involve many of you who we love and need right now, and to keep you updated on specific ways you can be praying for our baby.
We’ve also already learned so much through this journey. Certain terminology like perinatal and palliative care, which I knew nothing about prior to our diagnosis, have become common vernacular for us. I was shocked to discover that there are so many great resources out there. One of the things that’s been most helpful to me has been reading and learning from other parents’ experiences with fatal fetal diagnosis. We’re deeply grateful to the parents who’ve gone before us in their own similar, difficult journeys of infant loss and been vulnerable enough to share their stories. I hope to be able to share some resources that have helped us in this blog in case they can bring similar hope and peace to other families.
My goal is to share weekly updates regarding our baby and what we’re learning, both practically and spiritually. We’ll also share specific things we’d appreciate prayer for. As I’ll get into in our first post, we really don’t know how long this journey will last, but again, we are so, so grateful to all of you who are willing to walk it with us.
“The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made.”
- Psalm 145:9 NIV