Tag Archives: loss of child

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

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    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.

    A Book Born From Two Losses: Introducing Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping?

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    For over fifteen years God has been nudging me toward this book — Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping?

    Quietly. Persistently. In the way that only a calling feels — impossible to fully explain and impossible to fully ignore.

    It started with a question.

    Not mine — but one that my sister heard every single morning for months after she lost her baby girl. 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 pad down the hall and find his mama. 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 that had no framework yet for what death meant.

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

    What the Book Is

    Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? is a faith-based picture book for children ages 3-6 and the caregivers who love them.

    It follows 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 to answer the question he keeps asking. Honest words. Gentle words. Words rooted in Biblical truth and the real and certain promises of a God who has never broken one yet.

    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 is not 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.

    The Two Names at Its Heart

    This book carries two names.

    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.

    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.

    What Comes Next

    Mommy, Is Madison Sleeping? is currently on its journey toward publication.

    I will be the first to let you know when it is ready to be in your hands.

    In the meantime — subscribe below to stay connected. And if you are walking through a grief conversation with a young child right now and need resources, I would love to help. Leave a comment or reach out directly.

    This book is fifteen years in the making.

    It is almost time.

    “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion.” — Philippians 1:6

    Want to be the first to know when the book is available? Subscribe below.

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