A Small Little Post

Yesterday was a hard day. One of the hardest I’ve had in a number of months. And what makes it worse to me is that it was also a hard day for my husband, and those rarely occur at all.

Yesterday was the first time Warren and I truly had to face a newborn.

Yes, we’ve had a niece and nephew born since August, but they were far enough away that our only contact with them is through pictures and family group texts. So this was different for us, and it brought up a lot of pain and frustration.

It seems so unfair to have such a happy day in our friend’s lives be such a difficult thing for us to get around. That such a perfect event would be tainted in our memories by the conflicting feelings going on inside.

The day taught me a few things; misery loves company, and grieving never comes to an end- it changes over time but you don’t just stop feeling the loss.

Going through a stillbirth has changed me in more ways than even I have realized, and one of them is that scary, sad though that passes through my mind any time I see a pregnant woman nearing birth… That though of, “what if her baby doesn’t make it either?”

I’d be lying to say I hadn’t thought that a number of times for my friends around me who are (or were,) expecting. Not that I’d wish that on my worst enemy let alone my friend. Just the pure fact that “misery loves company,” and I wonder all the time what it might be like to have someone who truly understands what I am continually dealing with.

But even that is a lie. Because even if they had such a horrific experience as loosing their child, they wouldn’t really understand me. Everyone deals with things differently, and no one but Christ well ever really know exactly what I’ve felt and how I continue to work through my pains.

Not even my husband is experiencing the same loss as I. In a lot of ways he’s not as affected as I am through this experience, but in other ways, he feels it more deeply than I.

All we can do is be there for each other.

That’s all we can do for anyone, is put away our own pain or anger and be there to cheer on our friends in their victories.

And it’s that that truly makes us stronger.