Author Archives: oldtonew_creation

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About oldtonew_creation

I am a wife, a mama, a creative, and someone who has spent most of her life believing that God is in the business of making something new out of the old, the broken, and the left-behind.

Why We Take the Day Off Every Year: Creating Space for Grief That Comes Back

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It took us a little while to figure this out.

The second anniversary arrived and we were not prepared for it. Not because we had forgotten — you do not forget the anniversary of the day you delivered your stillborn daughter. (If you haven’t read Lucy Grace’s story yet, you can find it here). But because we had convinced ourselves that we were further along than we were. That the new normal we had found in the months leading up to it would hold on that day too.

It did not.

We learned something that second year —

You cannot always predict how a grief anniversary will land.

And trying to push through it like any other day is not strength. It is just a different kind of ‘not okay.’

Why We Take the Day Off

After that second year we made a decision.

We take the day off.

Not just my husband and me — our whole family. We create space. We slow down. We let the day be what it needs to be without the pressure of normal life crowding in around it.

Let me tell you how we got there — because the lesson did not come all at once.

If you haven’t read my story of burying grief – and what finally helped – you can read that here.

The first year we knew the anniversary was coming and we planned intentionally. We took the kids and did something fun together — something that honored Lucy Grace and then celebrated life. We knew that all the firsts were significant. We knew we needed to prepare. And so we did — and it helped.

The second year we thought we were further along – whatever that means.

In the months leading up to the second anniversary we had more good days than hard ones. More laughter than tears. And somewhere in that season of feeling more like ourselves again we made an assumption —

Maybe this year the anniversary would feel like a new normal too.

It did not.

The emotions rushed back for both of us — not gradually, not gently, but with the full force of a grief that had not diminished just because we had been carrying it more quietly. And what we realized in the middle of that day — scrambling to find our footing without having created any space to land — was something I have not forgotten since:

Even when we are not consciously processing our loss — our bodies are.

Grief does not wait for our permission. It does not check whether we have scheduled time for it or whether we have decided we are past it. It lives in us at a level that goes deeper than our conscious awareness — and on the anniversary of a significant loss it has a way of surfacing whether we are ready or not.

What we learned that second year was this —

If we tried to rush past this day we would actually be burying a pain that needed to be remembered in order to continue growing toward health.

Burying it is not the same as healing it.

Pushing through is not the same as moving forward.

And so from that year on — we took the day off. As a family, for many years. And more recently it has looked different — for me it is still a day I protect and hold carefully. For others in my family the rhythm has shifted over time as grief has changed shape for each of them.

And that is okay.

Grief does not look the same for every person in a family. The way someone honors an anniversary — or chooses not to — does not measure how much they loved the person they lost. It measures where they are in their own journey. And those journeys do not always run on the same timeline.

What matters is that the day is not ignored. What matters is that she is remembered. What matters is that the space exists — for whoever needs it, in whatever form they need it.

The Years That Fall on the Same Day

There is something I want to mention that caught us off guard the first time it happened —

Grief anniversaries that fall on the same day of the week as the original loss hit differently.

Lucy Grace was born sleeping on a Monday morning. Most years the anniversary falls on a different day — a Thursday, a Tuesday. But approximately every six years the date falls on the same day of the week again.

Those years land harder.

Not because the grief is larger — but because the ordinary rhythm of that day carries a memory that the other days don’t. Something about the same morning light, the same day-of-week feeling, the same sequence of hours — it brings it back in a more visceral way.

We did not anticipate that the first time it happened.

Now we know to pay attention to it.

If you are navigating grief anniversaries — it might be worth noting which day of the week your loss occurred. Not to dread the years when it comes around again — but to be gentle with yourself when it does. To take the space you need. To not be surprised by the weight of it.

What We Do

I am going to keep the specific details of how we spend the day close to our family — some things are meant to stay private and sacred.

But I will tell you the spirit of it.

We say her name. We remember out loud. We tell stories — the ones we have told before and the ones that surface fresh each year. We give ourselves permission to feel whatever is there without rushing past it or explaining it away. We do something that honors her — something that says you were here and you mattered and we have not forgotten.

And we do it together — or alone, or somewhere in between, depending on the year and the person and what the day requires.

For the Children

One of the things I am most grateful for is that our children have grown up in a family where Lucy Grace’s anniversary is acknowledged and honored every year.

They were almost four and almost six when we lost her. They asked questions then that were appropriate for their ages. And as they have grown — those questions have grown with them. Each year the anniversary gives us a natural and gentle opportunity to revisit her story at whatever level of understanding they are at now.

That is one of the gifts of creating an annual rhythm around grief —

It gives children a framework.

It tells them that death is not something we pretend did not happen. That the people we lose do not get quietly retired from our family story. That saying someone’s name — even years later, even when it hurts — is one of the most loving things we can do.

Lucy Grace is part of our family. She always will be. And our children will grow up knowing that.

You Do Not Have to Have It All Figured Out

If you are reading this and you have never created any kind of ritual around your grief anniversary — please hear me —

There is no right way to do this.

There is no perfect rhythm. No formula. No grief anniversary checklist that will guarantee you feel the right things in the right order.

There is only the intention to create space.

To say — on this day, every year, I am going to slow down and remember. I am going to honor the person I lost. I am going to give my grief a place to go rather than pushing it down and hoping it stays there.

That intention alone is enough to start.

Maybe for you it looks like taking the day off work. Maybe it looks like visiting a grave or a meaningful place. Maybe it looks like cooking a favorite meal or planting something or releasing something. Maybe it looks like gathering the people who loved them and telling stories around a table. Maybe it looks like sitting quietly alone with God and letting yourself feel whatever is there.

Whatever it looks like for your family — do it intentionally. Do it consistently. And do it without apology.

Because the people we have loved and lost deserve to be remembered.

Not just in the first year when the grief is fresh and everyone understands.

But every year. For as long as we are here to remember them.

A Note on the Grief That Surprises You

One more thing before I close —

Grief anniversaries are not the only days that will catch you off guard.

Sometimes it is a random Tuesday in March with no particular significance that suddenly feels impossibly heavy. Sometimes it is a song on the radio or a smell or a stranger’s laugh that sounds like theirs. Sometimes it is a milestone — a birthday they never reached, a graduation they never attended, a wedding they never saw.

Grief does not stay on the calendar.

And that is okay.

When it arrives unexpectedly — on the ordinary days, in the quiet moments, in the middle of something completely unrelated — give yourself the same grace you would give yourself on the anniversary. I wrote about the hand metaphor – and what grief looks like as it changes over time – here.

Slow down. Feel it. Say their name. And trust that the God who is close to the brokenhearted is just as present on the random Tuesday as He is on the anniversary.

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” — Hebrews 13:8

He does not take days off from being faithful.

And you do not have to take days off from grieving.

If your family has created rituals around a grief anniversary that have helped you — I would love to hear about them in the comments. And if this post found you in the middle of a hard anniversary season right now — I am so glad you are here. You are not alone.

Share this with someone who needs permission to slow down and remember.

The spiritual practices that helped us create intentional space for grief are ones I wrote about here.

Six Months After Loss: What Nobody Talks About and What Finally Helped

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Nobody warns you about six months. Okay, maybe there are warnings, but I was not prepared.

They show up in the early days — the casseroles, the cards, the phone calls, the people who sit beside you and cry with you and make sure you are not alone. And that is a gift. A real and necessary gift. We were a part of an amazing Church, in relationship with people that loved and cared for one another so well. We rejoiced with one another. We cried with one another.

But six months later — when the casseroles have stopped coming and the world has largely moved on and everyone around you seems to have quietly concluded that you are probably fine by now —

That is when it got hard for me in a different way.

Not the sharp, immediate grief of the hospital room. Not the raw, tender grief of the early weeks. But something slower and heavier and harder to name. Something that had been quietly building underneath the surface while I was busy trying to hold it together.

And somewhere around six months after losing Lucy Grace —

I hit bottom.

But before I tell you about that — I want to tell you about a night that happened somewhere in that season that I have never forgotten.

Our pastor and his wife showed up at our door.

These were not strangers — they were people who had been in that hospital room with us. Who had held Lucy Grace. Who had cried with us over her small, still body. Who had shown up in the most sacred and devastating moment of our lives and stayed.

And now here they were at our front door.

With ice cream.

No agenda. No prepared words. No fix. Just ten minutes and two people who wanted us to know —

You are not forgotten.

The world had kept moving. Life had kept happening all around us the way it always does — indifferent to the fact that we were still in the middle of something that felt unsurvivable. And in the middle of all of that ordinary world-keeping-moving —

They showed up with ice cream.

I cannot tell you why that particular moment has stayed with me the way it has. Maybe because it was so simple. Maybe because it cost them so little and meant so much. Maybe because it arrived in a season when I most needed proof that someone still remembered — that Lucy Grace still mattered — that we had not been quietly filed away under tragedy we are moving past now.

Ten minutes.

That is all it was.

And it was everything.

What Grief Bottom Looks Like

I want to be careful here because grief bottom looks different for everyone. I am not going to tell you that mine looked dramatic or sudden — because it didn’t. It looked more like a slow accumulation. Like a cup that had been filling drop by drop for months and finally ran over.

What I knew was this —

I was not okay.

Not in the way that everyone occasionally says they are not okay and means they are having a hard week. I mean genuinely, deeply, something-needs-to-change not okay.

The emotions and fears I was carrying had become too heavy to manage on my own. And what I began to recognize — slowly and uncomfortably — was that not all of them were new.

Grief has a way of doing this. When it is powerful enough — and the loss of a child is about as powerful as grief gets — it strips away the coping mechanisms you have quietly built over a lifetime. The inner lies you had always managed to keep at bay suddenly have a clear and open path to the surface. The fears you thought you had dealt with turn out to have only been set aside.

And there they all were.

Old and new together. Loud in a way they had never been allowed to be before.

The Lie You Don’t Know You’re Believing

I want to pause here and say something that I think is important —

We all battle lies.

Not just people who have experienced loss. Not just people in crisis. All of us — every single one — carry stories we have told ourselves about who we are, what we deserve, what God thinks of us, and whether we are enough. Stories that were planted early and reinforced quietly over years until they feel less like lies and more like just… the truth.

Grief doesn’t create those lies.

But it removes the armor we use to fight them.

I recently found a Bible study by Jennie Allen called The Lie You Don’t Know You Believe — and the title alone stopped me in my tracks. Because that is exactly what it felt like in that season. Not lies I had consciously chosen to believe. Lies I didn’t even know were there until grief made them impossible to ignore.

This is the scheme of the enemy. He does not need us to consciously embrace darkness — he just needs us to be too exhausted and too overwhelmed to keep the lights on.

Grief can do that.

Which is exactly why that season — as hard as it was — was also one of the most important invitations of my life.

It’s Okay to Not Be Okay — But Let’s Take Steps to Get Better

I want to say something directly to anyone reading this who is in their own version of grief bottom right now —

It is okay to not be okay.

Please hear that. Six months after loss — or a year after, or three years after — the world’s timeline for your healing is not God’s timeline. There is no finish line you should have crossed by now. There is no point at which still grieving becomes a character flaw.

You are allowed to still be in it.

But — and I say this with all the love and honesty I have —

Not okay is not a place to stay forever.

Not because grief has an expiration date. But because you were not made to carry this alone. And there are people and resources and tools that God has placed in this world specifically for the moments when the weight becomes too much to manage by yourself.

I wrote about the power of presence over words – and the nurse who taught me that – here.

For me that looked like counseling — and I want to remove any shame from that word right now. Seeking help is not weakness. It is not a lack of faith. It is not an admission that God is not enough.

It is wisdom.

It is the recognition that God often does His healing work through people — through trained, compassionate, skilled people who have been given tools to help us find our way through the things we cannot find our way through alone.

There are many forms that help can take —

Professional counseling with someone trained in grief and trauma. A grief support group where you are surrounded by people who understand from the inside. A church community that creates space for the hard conversations. A trusted friend or mentor who will sit with you in the honest places without trying to fix you. A Bible study that names the lies you have been carrying and replaces them with truth.

You do not have to choose just one. You do not have to have it all figured out before you reach out. You just have to take one step toward help — and trust that God will meet you there.

The Long and Nonlinear Road

I want to be honest with you about something —

Healing did not happen quickly for me.

The counseling helped. The community helped. The tools I was given helped. But the deeper work — the lies, the fears, the patterns that grief had exposed, the renewing my mind — that took time. More time than I expected. More time than felt comfortable.

Nearly five years.

I want you to sit with that number for a moment — not to discourage you, but to give you permission.

Five years of God quietly, faithfully, persistently doing something in me that I could not always see or feel or measure. Five years of choosing — imperfectly, inconsistently, one day at a time — to trust Him with the broken pieces. Five years of acting my way toward faith even when the feelings weren’t there yet. (I wrote about the harder prayer and what defiant joy looks like in the middle of grief here).

And then one day — not dramatically, not with a trumpet fanfare — I realized something had shifted.

I had accepted my imperfections.

Not resigned myself to them. Not given up on growth. But genuinely accepted that I am a person God loves and has a purpose for — exactly as I am, in the middle of the story, with all the unfinished edges still showing.

I had let go of control.

Not perfectly. Not permanently. But in a real and lasting way that had not been possible before. The need to manage outcomes, to hold everything together, to protect myself from the next unsurvivable thing — I laid it down. Not because the fear disappeared but because I finally trusted that God’s hands were more capable than mine.

And I was free.

Not from grief — the missing is still there and always will be.

But free from the lies that had been using grief as a doorway.

Free from the weight of carrying things I was never meant to carry.

Free to be who God created me to be — shaped by the loss but not defined by it. Devastated but not destroyed.

The spiritual formation practices that eventually gave me solid footing again are the ones I wrote about here.

God Was There the Whole Time

Here is what I know looking back —

God was not more present in the hospital room than He was in the grief bottom.

He was not closer to me in the sacred moments than in the shameful ones. Not more available in the bold prayers than in the seasons when I had no prayers left at all.

He was there.

In the counseling office. In the grief group. In the Bible study that named the lies. In the five slow years of one step at a time.

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” — Psalm 34:18

Close to the brokenhearted.

Not close to the ones who have it together. Not close to the ones who are praising Him with confidence and clarity and unwavering faith.

Close to the brokenhearted.

That is where He was. That is where He is. That is where He will always be.

If You Are in the Bottom Right Now

You are not alone.

You are not too far gone. You are not beyond help. You are not a burden to the people who love you. And you are not a disappointment to God.

You are a person in the middle of something hard — and that is exactly where He does some of His most profound and lasting work.

Take one step today.

Make one phone call. Send one text. Look up one grief counselor or one support group or one Bible study. Tell one person the honest truth about where you are.

Just one step.

And trust that the same God who met me in a hospital room at 2am — and in a counseling office six months later — and in the slow quiet years of healing that followed —

Will meet you exactly where you are.

“He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion.” — Philippians 1:6

If this post found you in your own grief bottom today — please reach out. Leave a comment, send a message, or find a trusted person in your life and tell them the truth about where you are. You were not made to carry this alone. I also wrote about how we learned to create intentional space for grief that keeps coming back — you can read that here.

And if this resonated with you — share it. You never know whose six months this might find.

I Prayed for a Miracle and God Said No: What I Know Now That I Didn’t Know Then

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I want to tell you about a prayer I prayed in a hospital room in the middle of the night.

Not because it was a beautiful prayer — though in its own raw and desperate way, I think it was.

But because of what happened after.

Not the miracle I asked for. The other thing. The harder and more unexpected thing.

The thing I am still living out today.

The Bold Prayer

It was late. Or early. I genuinely couldn’t tell you which.

Jonathon had fallen asleep in the chair beside my bed. The nurses had been in and out. The hospital was doing that thing hospitals do in the middle of the night — humming quietly with the business of keeping people alive while the rest of the world slept.

And I was alone with God for the first time since we had received the news.

Lucy Grace‘s heart was no longer beating. It had been medically confirmed. There was no coming back — not in the way we had hoped and prayed and desperately wanted.

And I prayed anyway.

Not quietly. Not resigned. Boldly — the way you can only pray when you have absolutely nothing left to lose and everything left to hope for.

I asked God to bring her back.

I told Him I believed He could — because I did. I still do. I serve a God who parted seas and raised the dead and spoke the whole universe into existence. Bringing my daughter back was not beyond Him.

And then I let myself imagine it. The doctors with no explanation. The story spreading. People all over the world hearing about a God who is still very much alive and active. Our family singing His praises for the remainder of our days.

God felt so present in that quiet moment that I truly believed He would.

The Harder Prayer

And then came the other prayer.

The one that cost me something.

It didn’t arrive dramatically — no lightning bolt, no audible voice. Just a quiet, persistent sense that there was something else I needed to say. Something that needed to be surrendered before morning came.

“Even if you choose not to save her — we will still praise you.”

I want to be honest — those words did not come easily. They were not a performance. They were not the thing I said because it sounded like the right Christian response in a crisis.

They were a choice.

A deliberate, costly, one-word-at-a-time choice to trust God with something I did not want to trust Him with.

And the moment I did — something shifted.

Not the circumstances. Not the outcome. Not the devastation that was waiting for me on the other side of morning.

But something underneath all of it.

Something steady. Something that had absolutely no business being there.

“And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” — Philippians 4:7

I had read that verse many times. I had written it in cards for other people. I had believed it in theory.

That night I felt it for the first time.

Devastated But Not Destroyed

In the weeks and months that followed — the ones where the miracle didn’t come and the grief did — my husband and I kept coming back to a passage of Scripture that became something like a lifeline for us.

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” — 2 Corinthians 4:8-9

Devastated — yes. Confused — absolutely. Struck down in ways we had never anticipated — without question.

But not destroyed.

That distinction mattered more than I can explain. Because there were days when destroyed felt like an accurate description of what was happening inside us. Days when the grief was so heavy and so present that it was hard to imagine ever feeling anything else.

And on those days we came back to that verse.

Not crushed. Not in despair. Not abandoned. Not destroyed.

We were still here. God was still here. And our current circumstances — as real and as painful as they were — did not define our future.

I wrote honestly about what those months looked like — including hitting a grief bottom I did not see coming — here.”

Defiant Joy

Years later, I found a book that gave language to something I was experiencing but couldn’t quite name.

Defiant Joy by Stasi Eldredge.

The title alone stopped me in my tracks — because that is exactly what it felt like. Not a gentle, peaceful, everything-is-okay joy. But a defiant one. A joy that looks the darkness in the eye and chooses to exist anyway. A joy that is not the absence of pain but the stubborn, faith-filled refusal to let pain have the final word.

That is the joy I was reaching for in that hospital room when I prayed the harder prayer.

Not happiness. Not relief. Not the absence of grief.

But the deep, settled, unshakeable conviction that God is still good — even when the circumstances say otherwise. Even when the miracle doesn’t come. Even when morning arrives and everything you feared is still true.

You Have to Choose and Act Your Way Into It

Here is something my husband said many times that became a personal challenge during this time: “Sometimes you have to choose and act your way into a feeling. You can’t feel your way into an action.”

That is one of the most practically true things I know about faith. It’s a choice.

Because faith — real, lived, costly faith — is not a feeling that arrives and then produces action. It is an action that you choose before the feeling gets there – or in the midst of the feelings. You choose to trust. You choose to praise. You choose to get up in the morning and put one foot in front of the other and believe that God’s promises are true even when your circumstances are screaming otherwise.

And somewhere in the choosing — somewhere in the acting — the feeling eventually follows.

Not always immediately. Not always in the way you expected. But it comes.

Because God is faithful to meet the faith we bring Him — even the small, trembling, I’m-not-sure-I-can-do-this faith. Even the faith that arrives as a prayer prayed in a hospital room in the middle of the night that costs everything to say.

He meets it. Every time.

John Mark Comer writes beautifully about this in Practicing the Way – a resource I will share more about soon.

What I Know Now That I Didn’t Know Then

I could not have told you that night what I know now.

I could not have told you that the harder prayer — the one that cost me something — would become one of the most significant moments of my faith journey. That the peace that arrived in that hospital room would still be something I draw from years later. That the choice to trust God with the unsurvivable would shape the way I trust Him with everything else.

I could not have told you that Lucy Grace — who never took a breath in this world — would change the way I live in it.

That her brief and beautiful presence would give me the courage to write a book that had been sitting unwritten for years.

That her story — and Madison Joy’s story — would become the foundation of something that reaches forward into other families’ grief and offers them hope.

Old to new.

Even here. Even this.

I don’t know what you are walking through today.

Maybe you are in your own hospital room — literally or metaphorically — praying bold prayers and waiting to see how God answers.

Maybe the miracle didn’t come the way you asked. Maybe you are in the aftermath — trying to figure out how to praise a God who said no. Maybe the faith feels small and the grief feels large and you are not sure you have what it takes to choose joy when everything in you wants to collapse.

Can I tell you something?

The prayer doesn’t have to be polished. The faith doesn’t have to be big. The joy doesn’t have to feel natural.

It just has to be defiant.

Choose it anyway. Act your way toward it. Trust that God will meet you there.

Because He will.

He always has.

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” — 2 Corinthians 4:8-9

You can read the full story of how this shaped the Old to New brand here.

If this post resonated with you today — share it with someone who needs permission to choose joy in the middle of something hard. And if you are in your own hospital room right now — I would love to pray for you. Leave a comment below or reach out directly. You are not alone.

The Old to New journals were designed to help you document God’s faithfulness even in the seasons when it is hardest to see.

A Nurse Taught Me This and I Have Never Forgotten It: The Words That Changed How I Understand Grief

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I want to tell you about a woman I never properly thanked.

I don’t even remember her name anymore — which feels like a strange thing to admit about someone who gave me some of the most meaningful words I have ever received. But grief has a way of blurring the edges of things while keeping the substance perfectly clear. I lost her name somewhere in the fog of those two days.

But I kept everything she said.

She Didn’t Have to Come

When we found out that Lucy Grace’s heart was no longer beating, the hospital connected us with a nurse who had been specifically trained in grief counseling for exactly this kind of loss.

She was on her way somewhere with her daughter when she got the call.

She came anyway.

If you haven’t read the story of the first night in the hospital, you can find it here.

She came the evening we found out — when the world had just gone quiet and wrong and we were still trying to find our footing. She sat with us and she talked and she shared things that I honestly — in that moment — wished she would stop sharing. I was exhausted. I was overwhelmed. I was running on no sleep and too many emotions and not nearly enough capacity for anything else to come in.

But she kept going. Gently. Persistently. With the quiet confidence of someone who had done this before and knew something I didn’t yet —

That I would need these words later. Even if I couldn’t receive them now.

And then she came back.

The next day — after Lucy Grace was born — she came back.

She didn’t have to. She had somewhere to be. She had her own life and her own daughter waiting. But she showed up again because she understood something about grief that I was only beginning to learn:

Showing up once is kind. Showing up twice is love.

The Hand

At some point during one of those visits — I couldn’t tell you exactly when, because time moved strangely in that hospital room — she taught me something that I have carried with me every single day since.

She asked me to hold up my hand.

Right in front of my face. As close as I could get it.

“What do you see?” she asked.

Just my hand, I told her. Everything else was blocked.

“That,” she said, “is what grief feels like right now. It is right in front of you — all the time — and it is really all you can see.”

Then she asked me to move my hand away. Just a little. Slowly.

And as my arm stretched out I could see around it — the window, the light, the room, her face.

“That is what happens over time,” she said. “The grief doesn’t go away. Your hand is still there. But little by little you start to see other things too. Good things. Beautiful things. Things that remind you that life is still happening and God is still present.”

And then she said something I was not expecting.

She told me that one day I might look up and realize — almost without noticing — that my hand had moved. That the grief was no longer consuming my entire line of sight. That I could see around it.

And when that moment came, she said, my first instinct might not be relief.

It might be guilt.

The sudden, disorienting feeling that the grief lifting somehow means the love is lifting too. That moving forward is a betrayal. That if I stop being consumed by the loss then I am leaving her behind — that the missing was proof I loved her and letting it ease means something has changed that shouldn’t.

She wanted me to know that before it happened.

Because that guilt — as real and as heavy as it feels — is not the truth.

The hand moving is not forgetting. The hand moving is not leaving her behind. The hand moving is not loving her less.

It is simply grief doing what grief was always meant to do — not disappear, but change. Not consume forever, but make room. Make room for life and joy and beauty to exist alongside the missing rather than being blocked out entirely by it.

You are allowed to see other things. You are allowed to breathe. You are allowed to let the hand move —

And trust that she is still there. Still loved. Still yours.

Even when the grief is no longer all you can see.

I have shared that image more times than I can count.

With friends walking through loss. With family members who couldn’t see past the pain. With anyone who needed to know that the way grief feels right now is not the way it will always feel.

The hand is always there. But it moves.

Jennie Lusko beautifully talks about the grief journey in her book The Fight to Flourish.

What She Said About the People Who Show Up

There was something else she shared — and this one is for everyone reading this who has ever stood beside a grieving person and not known what to say.

She told us that people would say things that maybe weren’t quite right. Things that didn’t fully land. Things that might even frustrate us in our grief — because grief has very little patience for empty words and hollow comfort.

“Sorry” gets said a lot, she told us. Even by people who had nothing to do with it. Even by people who don’t know what else to offer.

And in our exhaustion and our pain, she said, we might find ourselves frustrated. Irritated by the inadequacy of the words. Wishing people would just say something true or say nothing at all.

She leaned in a little when she said the next part.

“Don’t miss their presence.”

Because it is not the words that heal.

It is the showing up.

The words — even the imperfect ones, even the awkward ones, even the ones that miss the mark entirely — are often spoken out of love that doesn’t know how to express itself. Out of the deep human discomfort of standing beside pain we cannot fix and reaching for something — anything — to offer.

They are not perfect. But they came. And showing up matters more than words or perfection ever could.

What I Want You to Take From This

If you are the one grieving —

Give the people who show up a little grace for their imperfect words. Receive their presence even when their language falls short. The fact that they came — that they picked up the phone or drove to the hospital or sat beside you in the quiet — that is love in its most honest form.

And the words that feel like too much right now?

Write them down if you can. Or trust that they will come back to you.

Because grief receives things slowly — bit by bit, layer by layer, long after the moment has passed. Something that felt like too much in the hospital room may become exactly what you needed six months later when the world has moved on and you are still carrying it.

That nurse knew that.

She came back the second day anyway. She kept talking even when I was too exhausted to listen. And every word she said eventually found its way home.

I wrote honestly about what that season looked like — and what finally helped — here.

And If You Are the One Showing Up

You do not need the perfect words.

You do not need a theology degree or a grief counseling certification or a carefully prepared speech.

You need to show up.

Sit beside them. Hold their hand. Say “I don’t know what to say but I am here” — because that is the most honest and the most healing thing you can offer.

And if you say something imperfect — and you probably will, because we all do — extend yourself the same grace you would extend to anyone else who loved someone enough to try.

Showing up speaks louder than words ever could.

“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.” — Proverbs 17:17

If this post helped you — share it with someone who is walking alongside a grieving friend right now. And if you have your own story of someone who showed up when it mattered most — I would love to hear it in the comments below. I also wrote about how we learned to create intentional space for grief that comes back — you can read that here.

If you or someone you love needs a grief support community, GriefShare offers faith-based grief groups in churches nationwide.

    Built with Kit

    To the Fathers Who Grieve Quietly: You Are Not Alone

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    This post is for the ones who don’t usually get a post written for them.

    The fathers. The husbands. The brothers and uncles and grandfathers and friends. The men who showed up to the hospital and held it together. The men who stood at the graveside and didn’t know where to put it. The men who went back to work the following week because life kept moving and someone had to keep moving with it.

    The men who grieved — and are still grieving — quietly.

    This one is for you.

    The Grief Nobody Talks About

    We talk a lot about the grief of mothers.

    And we should — it is real and it is profound and it deserves every bit of the space it gets.

    But there is another grief sitting right beside it that does not get nearly as much acknowledgment.

    The grief of the father who held his wife together in the hospital room while his own heart was breaking.

    The grief of the man who was handed a baby he would never get to know — and had to find somewhere to put that love with nowhere to go.

    The grief of the husband who watched the woman he loves walk through the worst thing she has ever experienced — and felt the weight of not being able to fix it.

    The grief of a father who never quite got to know his child the way a mother does.

    Because pregnancy is intimate in a way that belongs uniquely to the mother. A father can put his hand on the belly and feel the kicks. He can talk to his baby and sing to her and pray over her. He can show up to every appointment and read every book and be as present as any father has ever been.

    And still — he experiences his child from the outside.

    The mother carries her on the inside. Feels every movement. Knows her before anyone else does.

    And when that baby is gone — the father grieves not only the child he lost, but the relationship he never quite got to begin. The getting-to-know-you that was supposed to happen on the other side of the delivery room and never did.

    That is a grief that does not get named very often.

    That grief is real. It is heavy. And it matters.

    What I Observed

    I have had a front row seat to men walking through the loss of a child — and the loss of a grandchild.

    My brother-in-law — who stood beside my sister when Madison Joy died, who held his family together with a quiet strength I will never forget, and who walked through the kind of grief that reshapes a person from the inside out.

    My husband — Lucy’s daddy — who sat beside my hospital bed the night before we delivered her, who fell asleep in that chair after hours of holding me together, and who has carried his own grief with a steadiness and a faith that has humbled me more times than I can count.

    You can read the full story of that night here.

    And then there are the grandfathers.

    Our dads — who watched their own sons & daughters walk through the unsurvivable and could not fix it. Who held their own grief while trying to hold ours. Who lost a grandchild and gained a whole new layer of pain that nobody had prepared them for either.

    There is something particularly heavy about that grief — the grief of a father watching his child suffer. It sits on top of their own loss rather than instead of it. They are grieving the grandchild they will never know and grieving alongside the child they have always known — at the same time, with nowhere to put either one.

    And the world does not always give men a natural space for that.

    There is a pressure — spoken or unspoken — to be strong. To keep it together. To be the steady one. To hold everyone else up while quietly setting their own grief aside until there is a better time for it.

    Sometimes that better time never comes.

    I know my dad carried this. He still does. And I know this because recently — years after losing both Madison Joy and Lucy Grace — he read the manuscript for Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping?

    And he cried.

    Not because the book was sad — though it is, in the honest and necessary way that all true things about grief are.

    But because grief, when it is finally given words and a place to land, has a way of releasing something that has been held for a very long time.

    That is what this post is for.

    To give it a place to land.

    A Letter to Lucy Grace

    written by her daddy

    When we lost Lucy Grace I asked Jonathon to write a letter to her — something we could keep in a memory book for our family. Something that would make sure her story was held in his own words, not just mine.

    What he wrote stopped me in my tracks.

    I want to share it with you today — with his permission and with all the love and grief it carries:

    I never got to know you quite like your mommy did. But in the last few weeks of you being in your mommy’s tummy, you kicked and kicked. You loved to kick anytime I’d put my hand on your mommy’s tummy — as if to say, “Hey, get your own space.” I even joked with people that I thought you’d be a red-head, because I was pretty sure you’d come out having a really fun and fiery personality. But you weren’t. You had brown hair just like your beautiful mom.

    I always looked forward to those moments that seemed few and far between. Like rocking you to sleep, or holding your hands for some of your first steps. Taking you to your first day of school. Baptizing you. And walking you down the aisle as you would marry a man who loves Jesus and loves you. But I never got to do that with you.

    Some day I’ll get to know you — the true you. The you that God created you to be. Until then, I’ll just have to settle for the you that I have concocted up in my mind of what you would have been like. But there will be a missing piece in my heart and our family this side of heaven.

    Getting to know you would have been an incredible joy in my life. Dealing with your loss was never something that I dreamed would happen, but something that I will allow God to teach me tremendous things. I miss you and I love you.

    — Daddy

    I have read that letter more times than I can count.

    And every single time, the line that gets me is this one —

    “Baptizing you.”

    Jonathon is a pastor. He has had the privilege of baptizing many people — children and adults — marking the moment they step into a public declaration of their faith. It is one of the most sacred things he gets to do. It’s one of the moments that he dreamt about as a father.

    He never got to do it for his own daughter.

    That is a grief that lives in a very particular place. The place where calling and fatherhood were supposed to intersect — and didn’t.

    And he carried it. Quietly. Faithfully. With a grace that I do not fully understand but have been deeply grateful for every day since.

    For the Men Who Are Still Carrying It

    If you are a father who has lost a child — If you are a husband who held your wife together while your own heart broke — If you are a brother or an uncle or a grandfather or a friend who showed up and stayed —

    I want you to know something.

    Your grief is not less real because it is quieter. Your love is not less deep because it did not have as many words. Your loss is not less significant because the world moved on before you were ready.

    You are allowed to grieve. You are allowed to say her name. You are allowed to miss the moments you never got to have — the first steps, the first day of school, the walk down the aisle, the ordinary Tuesday evenings that never came.

    You are allowed to have a missing piece.

    If you are a father navigating child loss, “Grieving Dads” by Kelly Farley was written specifically for you.

    What Faith Looks Like in a Grieving Father

    One of the things that has struck me most about watching Jonathon and my brother-in-law walk through loss is this —

    Their faith did not make the grief smaller.

    But it gave the grief somewhere to go.

    There is a difference between a man who grieves without hope and a man who grieves with it. Not in the size of the pain — but in the foundation underneath it. The thing that holds when everything else is shaking.

    Jonathon said it himself in that letter —

    “Dealing with your loss was never something that I dreamed would happen, but something that I will allow God to teach me tremendous things.”

    That sentence is not the absence of grief. That is grief submitting itself to something bigger than itself. That is a father choosing — in the middle of the hardest thing he has ever faced — to stay open to what God might do with the broken pieces.

    That is faith. Not the kind that makes everything okay. The kind that holds you when nothing is.

    I wrote honestly about what happened six months after our own loss — and what finally helped — here.

    To the Women Who Love Grieving Men

    Before I close I want to speak briefly to the women reading this who love a man who is grieving quietly.

    He may not have the words. He may not cry in front of you. He may go back to work and mow the lawn and fix things around the house because doing something — anything — is the only way he knows how to hold it.

    That is not absence. That is how some people carry love.

    Give him grace. Say her name in front of him. Let him know that his grief has a place in your home — not just yours. And trust that God is doing something in him that may not be visible yet.

    I wrote about the power of showing up – even without the right words – here.

    A Note on the Book

    Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? was written with Owen and his mama at the center — but it was written for every member of the family sitting on that couch.

    Including Daddy.

    Grief is not one conversation — and it does not belong to only one person in the family. This book is a tool for every grown-up who loves a grieving child and needs honest, faith-rooted words for the hardest conversation they will ever have.

    Whatever the loss. Whoever the child. Whoever is sitting beside them on the couch.

    The Old to New journals include specific prayers to pray over your spouse and your children – a practical tool for any season, including grief.

    “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” — Psalm 34:18

    If this post found its way to a father who needed it today — share it with him. And if you are that father — I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment below or reach out directly. Your story matters here too.

    Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? How One Little Boy’s Question Became a Children’s Book

    2 Replies

    Some ideas arrive loudly.

    They show up with momentum and excitement and a clear sense of direction — and you know immediately that you are supposed to do something with them.

    And then there are the other kind.

    The ones that arrive quietly. That settle somewhere deep and stay there. That you cannot fully explain and cannot fully ignore. That come back again and again over months and years until you finally stop pretending you are not supposed to do something about them.

    For over fifteen years, God has been nudging me toward this.

    Not loudly, but clearly. A quiet, persistent, unmistakable sense that the brokenness I had walked through — and watched the people I loved walk through — was meant to be more than a private grief. That it was meant to become something that could reach forward and offer hope to someone I would never meet.

    I could not make that feeling go away.

    Believe me — I tried.

    The Morning Question

    It started with my nephew.

    If you have been following along these past few weeks you already know Madison Joy’s story — my niece, born on Christmas morning, gone thirty-five days later. You know what my sister walked through. You know what our family walked through.

    If you haven’t read Madison Joy’s full story yet, you can find it here.

    Let me bring back the detail that stopped me cold.

    In the months after losing Madison Joy, my nephew — two years old, full of that particular toddler energy that has absolutely no interest in slowing down for grief — would wake up every morning and do what he had always done. Pad down the hall. Find his mama. And ask the question that had become part of his morning routine.

    “Mommy, is Madison sleeping?”

    He asked because he didn’t have other words — he had done it so many times before when Mommy was reminding him to keep his voice down because the baby was resting. He asked out of love and out of hope and out of the beautiful, heartbreaking logic of a two year old mind that had no framework yet for what death meant.

    And every single morning — my sister’s heart caught in her chest.

    When she told me about those mornings I felt something shift inside me. Not dramatically. Not with a trumpet fanfare. Just quietly and certainly — the way things feel when they are true.

    Someone needs to write a book about this.

    The Nudge That Wouldn’t Leave

    I want to be honest with you about something.

    God has been nudging me toward this book for over fifteen years.

    Fifteen years of that quiet, persistent tug. Fifteen years of picking it up and putting it down. Fifteen years of “someday” and “when the time is right” and “I’m not sure I’m the right person for this.”

    And fifteen years of God quietly, faithfully, persistently disagreeing.

    I can only explain it one way — it never went away. Not when life got busy. Not when other things took priority. Not even when my own grief arrived and I wondered whether I had any business writing about something I was still living through myself.

    The nudge stayed.

    Because I think God knew something I was still learning — that the brokenness was not a disqualifier. It was the qualification. The very thing that made me want to set it down was the thing that made the message worth carrying.

    You do not have to have it all figured out to be the right person for something.

    You just have to be willing to keep saying yes to the nudge. And that’s how Old to New Creations was born.

    You can read the full story of how Old to New Creations got its name here.

    Why This Book Needed to Exist

    Here is what I discovered when I started looking for resources to help families talk to their young children about death and loss — especially from a faith-based perspective:

    There was not much there.

    There were books for older children. There were books that addressed loss in vague, gentle terms that avoided the hard questions. There were secular books that offered comfort without Biblical hope. And there were a handful of faith-based titles that came close — but none that spoke directly to toddlers and preschoolers in honest, concrete language that a two year old could actually hold onto.

    None that gave parents a real starting place for the conversation — whatever kind of loss had brought them to it. The death of a grandparent. A parent. A sibling. A friend. Anyone a child has loved and lost.

    None that gave parents a guide for the questions children actually ask — including the scary ones.

    None that validated the full range of a child’s grief response — including the anger, the resistance, the covering of ears and wiggling away — and called it normal.

    And none that were written by someone who had sat on their own couch, held their own grieving child, and lived the conversation from the inside.

    I had. Twice.

    So I wrote the book I wished had existed.

    If you are looking for additional resources for grieving families, “The Memory Box” by Joanna Rowland is a beautiful companion title.

    “My Sibling Still” by Leah Vis speaks tenderly to families navigating sibling loss.

    What Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? Is

    It is the story of a little boy named Owen whose baby sister Madison has died. It is the story of a mother sitting down on the couch morning after morning, taking his little hands in hers, and finding the words — honest, gentle, Biblical words — to answer the question he keeps asking.

    But while Owen’s story is specific, the truths his mother speaks are not.

    They are for any child who has ever lost someone they loved. Any child trying to make sense of an empty chair at the table. Any child asking why someone they loved isn’t coming back. Any child who needs an honest, loving, faith-rooted answer to the hardest question they have ever asked.

    The book addresses the questions children actually ask: What does dead mean? Where did they go? Can they see me? Am I going to die too? Will we ever see them again?

    It validates every feeling — the confusion, the sadness, the anger, the fear — and gives each one a name and a place.

    It anchors every hard truth in Biblical hope — not vague comfort, not empty reassurance, but the real and certain promises of a God who has never broken one yet.

    And it includes a comprehensive guide for parents and caregivers — because grief is not one conversation. It comes back, in new forms, as children grow. And every time it does, you deserve a resource to come back to.

    A Book Born From Two Losses

    This book carries two names in its heart.

    Madison Joy — born on Christmas morning, gone at thirty-five days, whose brief life raised a question in her brother’s heart that took fifteen years to bloom into something that could help other families, too.

    And Lucy Grace — my own daughter, delivered still, whose brief and beautiful presence gave me the courage to finally stop saying someday and start saying yes.

    If you haven’t ready Lucy Grace’s story yet, you can find it here.

    I wrote this book for my nephew — who deserved honest, loving words for the hardest thing his two year old heart had ever held.

    I wrote it for my sister — who deserved a resource to come back to every time the question returned in a new form.

    I wrote it for my own children — who asked their own questions alongside me and needed truth that was bigger than my grief.

    And I wrote it for you — whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever loss has brought you to this page.

    Because the nudge was never just about my family.

    It was always about yours too.

    What Comes Next

    The book is currently on its journey toward publication — and I will be the first to let you know when it is ready to be in your hands.

    In the meantime — if you are walking through a grief conversation with a young child right now and you need resources, I would love to help. Leave a comment below or reach out directly. And if you are a grief counselor, a child life specialist, a pediatric nurse, or a pastor who works with grieving families — I would especially love to connect with you.

    This book exists because a two year old asked a question his mama couldn’t answer alone. This blog and ministry exists, because God wants to walk with each of us to make old things new – Old to New Creations.

    And it is going to find its way to every family that needs it.

    I am sure of that — because the same God who nudged me for fifteen years is not in the habit of starting things He doesn’t finish.

    “Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” — Philippians 1:6

    If this resonated with you today — share it with someone who needs it. And if you want to be the first to know when the book is available, subscribe below. This is fifteen years in the making. It is almost time.

    In the meantime, if you are walking through grief right now and looking for a tool to anchor your faith, the Old to New journals were designed for you.

    Thirty-Five Days: The Loss That Started It All

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    While many people know the grief of losing someone, there is another kind.

    The particular kind of grief of standing beside the ones who are experiencing loss. The sisters. The aunts. The friends. The ones who love the grieving.

    I know that grief.

    It is the grief of watching someone you love walk through something you cannot fix.

    And it changed me just as permanently as anything I have ever experienced firsthand. (Learn more about the origin of Old to New Creations here).

    Madison Joy

    My niece Madison Joy was born on Christmas morning.

    I want you to sit with that for a moment — because it matters. Christmas morning. The morning the whole world celebrates the arrival of a baby who came to bring life and light and hope. And there she was — Madison Joy — arriving on that same morning, full of promise and possibility and that particular joy that only a brand new baby carries.

    She was beautiful like her momma.

    She was here.

    She was loved.

    She was ours.

    For thirty-five days.

    The Call No One Expects

    I am going to keep some of the medical details close — they are my sister’s story to tell in full, and I want to honor that. What I will tell you is that Madison Joy suffered a brain bleed. Emergency surgery followed. And then came the waiting — the desperate, faith-filled, on-your-knees waiting that every person who has ever sat in a hospital waiting room knows intimately.

    We prayed. Our family prayed. Our church – our community – prayed. People who had never met Madison Joy prayed — because that is what you do when a thirty-five day old baby is fighting for her life and you believe in a God who can intervene.

    We had never imagined God wouldn’t save her.

    And then He didn’t.

    Not the way we asked.

    Three years after Madison Joy, our family faced a similar and devastating loss of our own – you can read Lucy Grace’s story here.

    Walking Alongside

    I want to speak for a moment to everyone reading this who has ever been the one walking alongside.

    Because grief has many seats at the table — and not all of them get acknowledged.

    Watching my sister and brother-in-law walk through the loss of Madison Joy was one of the most life-changing things I have ever witnessed. I say life-changing deliberately — not as a figure of speech but as a literal truth. The person I was before that season and the person I became on the other side of it are not quite the same.

    What I observed in that hospital, and in the months that followed, was something I did not have adequate words for at the time.

    My sister — in the middle of the most devastating loss a mother can experience — found what she later described as a peace that passes all understanding.

    Not on the other side of it. Not after the grief had softened or the tears had slowed.

    Right there. In the hospital. In the middle of the worst moment of her life.

    The grief was real — crushing and bottomless and every bit as heavy as you would expect. The pain did not disappear. The tears did not stop. But underneath all of it, arriving as a gift from God Himself, was something steady and unshakeable that had absolutely no business being there, given the circumstances.

    That is not a human peace. You cannot manufacture that in yourself. You cannot think your way into it or grieve your way toward it.

    It is given. Freely. By a God who does not wait for the storm to pass before He shows up in it.

    I recognized it. I had felt it myself in my own hospital room years later.

    It is the kind of peace that does not make sense from the outside. The kind that makes people who don’t know Jesus tilt their heads and quietly wonder. The kind that can only come from One place.

    I want to be honest though — we each carried a different measure of grace for our role in this. My grief as the sister was real and it was heavy. But it was not the same as my sister’s grief as the mother, or my brother-in-law’s grief as the father. Walking alongside someone through loss does not mean carrying an equal share of it. It means showing up faithfully for whatever portion you are asked to carry — and trusting God to sustain the ones carrying more than you can imagine.

    I wrote specifically for the fathers and the men here.

    The Hardest Part of All

    In the weeks and months after losing Madison Joy, grief did what grief often does —

    It uncovered things that were already there.

    For my sister. For her husband. For me, in ways I would not fully understand until years later when I faced my own loss.

    Grief has a way of stripping away the coping mechanisms we have quietly built over a lifetime. The inner lies we have always managed to keep at bay suddenly have a clear path to the surface. The emotional pain we thought we had dealt with turns out to have only been set aside.

    That is not a flaw in the grieving process. That is the grieving process doing exactly what it was designed to do — bringing everything to the light so that healing can reach all the way down.

    It is painful. It is disorienting. And it is one of the most important things I want you to know if you are in the middle of it right now:

    The grief that is uncovering old pain is not punishing you. It is inviting you toward a deeper healing than you have ever had.

    Helping a Two Year Old Understand

    My nephew was two years old when he lost his baby sister.

    Two years old.

    Old enough to know something was wrong. Old enough to miss her. Young enough that the concept of death was completely beyond his reach. Helping him understand — or even begin to understand — was one of the most difficult and tender challenges my sister faced in those early months.

    And every morning, without fail, he would pad down the hall and find her.

    And every morning he would ask the same question.

    “Mommy, is Madison sleeping?”

    He asked because he didn’t have other words — he had done it so many times before when Mommy was reminding him to keep his voice down because the baby was resting. He asked out of love and out of hope and out of the beautiful, heartbreaking logic of a two year old mind.

    And every morning, my sister’s heart caught in her chest.

    That question is the reason this blog exists. That question is the reason a book exists. You can read the full story of how it became a book here. And that question is the reason I kept writing long after it would have been easier to stop.

    If We Can’t Bring Her Home

    Before I close I want to share something my sister said — because it is one of the most faith-filled sentences I have ever heard spoken in the middle of grief.

    In the hospital, facing the unsurvivable, my sister and brother-in-law made the decision to donate Madison Joy’s organs.

    And my sister’s heart behind that decision was this:

    “If we can’t bring our daughter home — maybe our faith can be used by God to make it possible for someone else to bring their child home.”

    I have turned that sentence over in my mind hundreds of times since she said it.

    In the middle of her own devastation — before the grief had even fully arrived — she was thinking about another mother. Another family. Another child who might live because of hers.

    That is not a human instinct. That is the Holy Spirit working through a broken heart that chose, even in the worst moment, to remain open.

    Old to new.

    Even here. Even this.

    For the Ones Walking Alongside

    If you found this post because you are not the one who lost someone — but you love someone who did — I want you to know that your grief is real and it matters too.

    You do not have to have all the right words. You do not have to fix it. You do not have to be strong every moment.

    Show up. Stay. Hold their hand. Sit in the quiet with them when there is nothing left to say.

    And trust that God is doing something in you through this season too — something you may not be able to see yet. Something that will matter more than you know.

    “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” — Psalm 147:3

    Next week I want to take you inside the story of how a two year old’s morning question became a children’s book — and why I believe it is a resource every family needs before loss arrives, not just after. Subscribe below so you don’t miss it.

    And if Madison Joy’s story touched you today — share it. Her thirty-five days mattered. They still do.

    If you are walking alongside a grieving family right now and looking for a tool to help anchor your own faith through uncertainty, the Old to New Journals were designed for exactly this season.

    Lucy Grace – Gift of Light: The Morning We Said Hello and Goodbye

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    If you missed the night before, start here.

    There are mornings that change you.

    Not in the slow, gradual way that most change happens — where you look back years later and realize something shifted without you noticing. But in the immediate, irreversible way. The way that means there is a before, and there is an after, and the person on the other side is not quite the same as the one who woke up that morning.

    June 17th was that morning for me.

    She Came Earlier Than Expected

    I had been started on induction medications the night before. After some pain management in the middle of the night I had managed to get a little sleep — fragile, in-and-out sleep, the kind that doesn’t quite reach the bottom. I had been mentally preparing myself for a long day. I assumed delivery would be closer to midday. Time to breathe. Time to gather myself.

    But Lucy had her own timeline.

    By early morning — earlier than any of us expected — she was here.

    And the room that had been so quiet the night before was suddenly, gently, full.

    The Woman Who Showed Up

    I need to tell you about my midwife.

    I had trusted her through all five of my pregnancies — but due to the nature of on-call schedules, she had never actually delivered any of my children. Not my first, not my second. She had been present for so much of the journey and absent for every arrival.

    But I had chosen her for a reason that went all the way back to my very first pregnancy — one that ended in an early miscarriage. She happened to be the one on call in the office that day. And it was her care, her honesty, and the way she treated me like a person rather than a patient that convinced me — this is who I want walking with me through this.

    She had walked with me through loss and through joy and through every kind of pregnancy in between. And on the morning I needed her most — the morning none of us had ever imagined would come — she made sure she was there.

    She rearranged her schedule. She showed up.

    I will never forget that.

    If you are in the early stages of pregnancy and you are choosing a provider — choose someone whose care you have felt on a hard day. Not just a good day. Because you do not know which kind of day is coming.

    The Nurses

    I have thought about those nurses many times since those days I spent in their care – the day before and this morning.

    They were professional and skilled and everything you would want in a medical team. But they were also something else — something that goes beyond training and job descriptions. They were human in the most beautiful way. Their eyes gave them away. You could see that they wished they could change it. You could feel that they cared — not just about doing their jobs well, but about us. About her.

    That mattered more than I can say. In a moment when the world felt very cold and very hard, the warmth of the people in that room made us feel loved.

    And then one of them asked us something I will never forget.

    Take the Pictures

    When we learned we would deliver and the reasons around it, we had been offered the option of having a photographer come to document the birth.

    We said no.

    I understand why we said no. We had never imagined this would be our experience. We weren’t prepared for any of it — let alone the idea of a photographer in the room on the hardest morning of our lives. It felt like too much. It felt wrong somehow.

    But our nurses — in their deep, quiet care for us — asked for our permission to take pictures themselves. Because they knew, even when we didn’t, that someday we would want them.

    I am so glad we said yes.

    I am so glad they asked.

    Those pictures are some of the most precious things I own. They are proof that she was here. That she was real. That she was held. That she was loved – even though she never opened her eyes in this world.

    So if you are ever in a similar moment — or if you are ever supporting someone who is — please hear me on this:

    Take the pictures. (Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep is an amazing nonprofit that provides professional photographers for families experiencing infant loss).

    It will not feel like the right thing to do in the moment. Do it anyway. You will be grateful for the rest of your life that you did.

    She Was Lucy Grace

    I told you last week that Jonathon and I had not settled on her name.

    We had it narrowed down to two. We had thought and prayed and gone back and forth — but we had not decided. And then suddenly we were facing the reality that we had less than twelve hours to choose. Her name would be the only thing we would have. No memories of her cooing or laughing or walking. No stories of how she loved people or what made her giggle or who she would have become.

    Just her name.

    I didn’t want to wait until I saw her. I was afraid that in the emotion of the moment I would still be unable to decide — that grief and joy and exhaustion would make the decision impossible.

    But by the grace of God, the moment our midwife placed her on my chest —

    We knew.

    She was Lucy Grace.

    Lucy — light. Grace — gift.

    Gift of light.

    She was small and perfect and entirely herself. And she was ours — for that morning, for that day, for always.

    The Gift of a Full Day

    We were able to spend most of that day in the hospital room with her.

    Our parents came. Close friends came. The people who loved us most showed up and sat with us and held her and cried with us and made that room feel less like a place of loss and more like a place of love.

    I did not expect that.

    I did not expect that the hardest day of my life would also contain some of the most tender, sacred moments I have ever experienced. The way grief and gratitude can exist in the same room at the same time — I did not fully understand that until that day.

    She never took a breath in this world. But she was not alone. And neither were we.

    What Lucy Grace Left Behind

    Lucy has changed the way I live my life.

    Not in spite of losing her — because of it.

    She has helped me solidify my faith in ways I never could have anticipated. My faith is not in myself or in what I can control. It is not in my circumstances. It is not even in the people closest to me — as much as I love them. My faith is rooted in God’s love for me. In His presence in hospital rooms in the middle of the night. In the peace that showed up when it had absolutely no business being there.

    That faith is available to you too.

    Not because life will go the way you planned. Not because God will always answer the way you asked. But because He is faithful — in the before, in the after, and in every hard middle in between.

    Lucy Grace — gift of light.

    Her time here with us was brief.

    But the gift of light is eternal.

    “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” — John 1:5

    Next week I will share the story of Madison Joy — my sweet niece, the baby girl whose loss started this whole journey, and the little boy whose morning question changed everything. If you don’t want to miss it, subscribe below.

    And if Lucy Grace’s story touched you today — share it. You never know whose hospital room this might find its way into. I also wrote about how we learned to create intentional space for grief that keeps coming back — you can read that here.

    The Old to New Journals were designed for spiritual formation – if you are in a season of grief or longing for spiritual formation, check them out!

    The Night Before: What No One Tells You About Delivering a Stillborn Baby

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    If you’re just finding this series, start here.

    I’m not even sure what time it was when I finally found myself alone.

    Jonathon had fallen asleep next to my hospital bed — the kind of exhausted sleep that only comes after hours of holding someone else together. The nurses had been in and out, gentle and quiet, hoping I could get some rest too. They knew what the next day would bring. I was trying to find strength to get through what the next day would bring.

    And somewhere in that stillness — somewhere between the hum of the hospital and the weight of what was coming — I finally had a moment to let it land.

    Our baby’s heart was no longer beating. It had been medically confirmed. We didn’t know exactly how long — only that it had been long enough. Long enough that there was no coming back.

    And I was going to have to deliver her anyway.

    The Pregnancy I Never Expected Would End This Way

    I want to back up for just a moment — because the cruelest part of this story is how ordinary it had been right up until it wasn’t.

    This pregnancy had been smooth. Really smooth — probably the healthiest of all five of my pregnancies. I had been exercising consistently, feeling strong, feeling good. Our older two kids were old enough to feel her kick and squeal with excitement. For the first time ever, Jonathon and I had found out the gender ahead of time — so we had known for months that we were expecting a little girl. Our family was going to be complete.

    Everything felt right. Everything felt ready.

    And then it wasn’t.

    I won’t walk you through every medical detail — partly because some of it is still mine to hold privately, and partly because the details are not really the point. We had some hope that they had found a heartbeat, but when the ultrasound tech’s hand began to shake, I knew she couldn’t find a heart beat, and the world went very quiet. The kind of quiet that has weight to it. The kind that sits on your chest and makes it hard to breathe.

    We had no answers for why. We still don’t.

    And we had less than twenty-four hours before we would meet her.

    The Prayer I Didn’t Know I Had in Me

    It was in that quiet hospital room, in the middle of the night, that I finally had a moment to pray.

    Not the structured, composed kind of prayer. The desperate, honest, everything-on-the-table kind.

    I prayed boldly — the way you can only pray when you have absolutely nothing left to lose. I asked God to bring her back. I told Him I believed He could. I began to imagine, in vivid detail, what that miracle would look like — the doctors with no explanation, the story spreading, people all over the world hearing about a God who is still very much alive and active. I could picture it so clearly. I wanted it so badly.

    God felt so present in that quiet moment that I truly believed He would.

    And then came the harder prayer. (I wrote about that prayer and what followed here).

    The one that cost me something.

    “Even if you choose not to save her — we will still praise you.”

    I want to be honest — those words did not come easily. They were not a performance. They were not something I said because it sounded like the right Christian thing to say in a crisis. They rolled off my tongue slowly, like something being surrendered one word at a time.

    And the moment they did — something shifted.

    Peace That Actually Passes Understanding

    I had read Philippians 4:7 many times.

    “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

    I had quoted it. Written it in cards for other people. Believed it in theory.

    But I had never felt it the way I felt it in that hospital room.

    It wasn’t the absence of grief. I was still grieving — deeply, physically, in a way that had no words. It wasn’t the absence of fear about what the next morning would bring. It was something underneath all of that. Something steady and unshakeable that had no business being there given the circumstances.

    That is the only way I know how to describe it — it had no business being there. And yet there it was.

    I had chosen to trust God with what felt like an unbearable reality. Not because I understood it. Not because I had answers. But because I knew — in a way that went deeper than my feelings — that He was still God. That He still loved me. That He still loved her.

    And that His presence in that room was real whether or not He answered my prayer the way I had asked.

    What Nobody Tells You

    Nobody tells you that the night before is its own kind of grief.

    Not the loss itself — that comes in waves, over time, in ways you cannot predict. But the night before. The waiting. The knowing what is coming and having absolutely no power to stop it.

    Nobody tells you that the nurses become some of the most important people in your story — the ones who move quietly and speak softly and treat your baby like she matters, because she does.

    Nobody tells you that you will have to make decisions — real, practical, unexpected decisions — in the middle of the most emotionally overwhelming night of your life.

    And nobody tells you that somewhere in the middle of all of it, if you are still enough and honest enough and desperate enough —

    God will show up.

    Not to fix it. Not to explain it. Just to be there.

    Steadier than you are. Closer than you can imagine. Holding something you cannot hold yourself.

    For Anyone Reading This in Their Own Dark Night

    If you have ever spent a night in a hospital room waiting for something you couldn’t stop — If you have ever prayed a prayer that cost you something — If you have ever felt a peace that made absolutely no sense given what you were walking through —

    You are not alone.

    And if you are in that night right now — if this is finding you in the middle of something that has no good answers —

    I want you to know that the God who met me in that quiet hospital room is the same God who is with you right now.

    He is not far away. He is not busy. He is not surprised by what you are facing.

    And He can be trusted — even when the answer is not the one you prayed for.

    “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” — Philippians 4:7

    Next week I will share the rest of Lucy Grace’s story — the morning we met her, the moment we knew her name, and what it means to say hello and goodbye in the same breath. If you don’t want to miss it, subscribe below.

    And if this resonated with you today — share it with someone who needs it. You never know whose dark night you might be speaking into.

    If you are in a season of waiting or grief right now, the Old to New Journals were designed for exactly this.

    Why I Named It Old to New: The Verse That Changed Everything

    4 Replies

    It started with a pair of old jeans.

    Not a theology degree. Not a grief ministry. Not a vision for a brand that would one day carry the stories of two little girls and a book that had been fifteen years in the making.

    Just a pair of old jeans — and a question that has driven me my whole life.

    What could this become?

    Where It All Began

    I have always loved taking something old and making it into something new.

    Long before Old to New Creations had a name — long before it had a mission or a brand or a journal or a book — it lived in my hands. In the quiet, creative hours spent repurposing things that other people might have set aside.

    Old jeans became purses and bags — cut and stitched and decorated with appliqué designs that made them entirely and uniquely themselves. Nothing about them said old denim anymore. They said made with intention.

    And then there were my Grandma’s sheets.

    The soft ones. The special ones — the kind that carry a particular warmth that only comes from years of being washed and slept in and loved. When they were no longer needed as sheets I could not bring myself to let them go. So I repurposed them into little dresses for little girls.

    Something ordinary — something that might have been discarded — transformed into something new and sweet and full of a different kind of love than it had carried before.

    I did not know then that God was showing me something.

    I just thought I was sewing.

    The Name That Came Before the Meaning

    Old to New Creations became the name for what I was making long before it became the name for what God was doing. You can read the full brand introduction here.

    It fit the work — the literal, hands-on, fabric-and-thread work of taking old things and making them new. It was descriptive and simple and true.

    And it stayed.

    Through seasons of crafting and creating. Through the early days of sharing what I was making. Through years of life that brought joy and loss and grief and growth in ways I never anticipated when I first stitched a purse out of a pair of old jeans.

    The name stayed — quietly, persistently — even as the meaning began to expand beyond anything I had originally intended for it.

    The Moment It All Connected

    It was not until I sat down to design the journal that I saw it clearly.

    I had been carrying the name for years. I had been living the story for years — the grief, the spiritual formation, the slow and nonlinear journey of allowing God to make something new out of the broken places. And when the time came to put a name on the journal — the tool I was creating to help other women practice intentional faith —

    The name was already there.

    Old to New Creations.

    Not just a craft brand. Not just a sewing hobby. But the thread that ran through everything — from my Grandma’s sheets to a hospital room in the middle of the night to a Fuller Seminary cohort to a children’s book that had been waiting fifteen years to be written.

    The same name. The same truth. The whole journey.

    And underneath all of it — a verse I had known for years that suddenly felt like it had been written specifically for this moment:

    “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” — 2 Corinthians 5:17

    The Verse That Changed Everything

    I want to sit with this verse for a moment — because I think it is one of the most radical and most misunderstood promises in all of Scripture.

    The old has passed away. The new has come.

    We tend to read that as a one-time event. The moment of salvation — the before and the after. And it is that. Absolutely and completely that.

    But I have come to believe it is also something more.

    It is a description of how God operates.

    Not just at salvation — but throughout a life. Throughout a grief. Throughout a season of loss and confusion and inner lies and slow healing. Throughout the ordinary Tuesday mornings and the hospital room nights and the anniversary days and the counseling offices and the small groups and the sewing tables.

    God is always in the process of making something new.

    Not erasing the old — the old is still there. The jeans are still denim. The grief is still grief. The scars are still real. But He takes the old and He works it into something that could not have existed without it. Something that carries the history and is transformed by it at the same time.

    That is Old to New.

    Not the destruction of what was. The transformation of it.

    I wrote about the slow and nonlinear road of healing here.

    What This Brand Is Really About

    I want to tell you — as clearly as I can — what Old to New Creations exists to do.

    It exists for anyone who has ever held something broken and wondered if it could ever be made new.

    It exists for the grieving mother who cannot see past the loss to imagine what God might be building in the rubble.

    It exists for the woman who has been a Christian her whole life and suspects there is a depth of practice and presence she has not yet found.

    It exists for the person in the hard middle of something — the waiting, the suffering, the confusion, the slow work of healing — who needs to be reminded that God is not finished with their story.

    It exists because of a pair of old jeans and my Grandma’s sheets. Because of Madison Joy — born on Christmas morning, thirty-five days. Because of Lucy Grace — gift of light, delivered still, whose brief and beautiful presence changed everything. Because of a Fuller Seminary cohort and a Listening Prayer session and a small group that has shown up for years. Because of a two year old boy who padded down the hall every morning and asked a question that planted a seed. Because of fifteen years of a quiet, persistent nudge that would not go away.

    All of it — every broken and beautiful piece of it — has been Old to New all along.

    I just needed time to see it clearly.

    I wrote about that prayer and what followed here.

    An Invitation

    If you have been reading along these past twelve weeks — thank you.

    You have walked with me through hospital rooms and grief bottoms and anniversary days and spiritual formation cohorts and sewing tables. You have let me share the most sacred and most difficult parts of a story that I was not always sure I was ready to tell.

    And if any part of it has resonated — if any part of it has found you in your own hard middle and offered even a small measure of hope —

    Then it was worth every word.

    Because that is what Old to New is for.

    Not to present a polished, finished version of a life that has it all figured out. But to share honestly from the middle of the journey — the broken places and the beautiful ones — and point to the God who has been faithfully, persistently, supernaturally at work in all of it.

    He is doing a new thing.

    Even now. Even here. Even in whatever you are carrying today.

    “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” — Isaiah 43:19

    Do you perceive it?

    Look closer.

    It is already happening.

    Thank you for being here. If this series has meant something to you — share it with someone who needs it. And if you are just finding Old to New Creations for the first time — welcome. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.

    There is more to come. Subscribe below so you don’t miss what’s next.

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