Tag Archives: stillbirth grief Christian

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.