Tag Archives: grief

Full Heart Empty Womb for FREE and Update :)

Posted in Faith, Infertility, inspiration, Steph, The Book by

Happy Sunday! A couple of exciting things from my little world….

  1. For a limited time, my book, “Full Heart Empty Womb: How I Survived Infertility…Twice,” is available for FREE through Kindle Unlimited! Also if you already have a Kindle copy, you can lend it to a friend. I am really excited about this opportunity. I wrote the book to help people who are dealing with Infertility and this will help me reach so many more. If you have a loved one who is dealing with or has dealt with Infertility, I would be honored if you would share this with them.
  2. I am finally going to start writing my second book! My plan was to start it when my kids went back to school last fall… and now I am 5 weeks away from them getting out for the summer. Eeeks!!!  So much for plans!

After my dad’s devastating cancer diagnosis, I went to a weird place. Not a bad place, not a particularly good place, just a funky place where I just didn’t know how to deal with all of the emotions that were crashing down on me. My original plan was to write a devotional for people dealing with Infertility. I will still do that because there is so much unique pain that I can identify with and offer comfort. However, I want to write a devotional for people who are struggling with coping during any hard time in their life. God healed me through writing about my battle with infertility, I am sure that writing through this will help me too.

Thank you for coming with me on this journey. I will share portions of it as I go along!

Immanuel in the Hard Times

Posted in inspiration, Matthewism, Prayer, Steph by

“Mama, please don’t let me watch another movie that will make my nose burn!” Matthew said with tears in his eyes. We had just watched E.T. for the first time, and my sweet sensitive son was overcome with sadness.

I thought his description of how you feel when tears are starting to form was quite accurate. My nose burns as I feel my eyes start to well with tears. Unfortunately, that has been a daily feeling for me the last couple of weeks.

I am in one of those seasons where there has been tragic event after tragic event in my little community. I feel like my heart is being held together by a very thin thread. One more thing and it will just fall apart.

This morning I sat in my Sunday School class and asked for prayers for each of these heartbreaking situations. Just one of these would have been tough to bear. My nose burned and my eyes watered as I asked for prayers for my friends, my family, and myself.

Our lesson was in the 1st chapter of Matthew as we prepare to celebrate Jesus’ birth on Christmas.

The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel – which means “God with us.” Matthew 1:23 (NIV)

God whispered to my heart, “Immanuel – God is with you. I am holding your heart together.”

Unfortunately, we will all go through seasons where we feel like we are dealt blow after emotional blow. I am so thankful for Immanuel, God with Us.

Immanuel.  

Immanuel.  

God is with YOU.

%22The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel – which means “God with us.”

Happy Holidays??

Posted in Infertility, inspiration, Steph, The Book by

Happy Holidays PicIt is the most wonderful time of the year, right? Full of happiness, cheer and all that jazz….

It wasn’t until I was struggling with infertility that the “most wonderful time of the year” turned into the worst. It was a time when I would want to go to bed and wake up after the New Year.   Why is that, you wonder?? Similar to how someone who is grieving the loss of a loved one, people who are infertile are grieving the child that they want desperately in their life. If you are blessed enough to not have even had to deal with infertility, then this will help you have some insight into how hard the holidays are for infertile people. Give yourself a pat on the back. You are about increase what I like to call your CQ – Compassion Quotient 😉

Thanksgiving. A time when you, hopefully, are able to sit around the table with your family. It is a day that you can focus on all the many blessings that you have in your life. But what if the one thing that your heart desires most is out of your reach? What if you are at the adult table staring at the kid table wondering, “When is it my turn?” Ironically, the main topic of conversation at said adult table is….kids. What can you add to the conversation? The failed cycles? The horrible side effects from the evil fertility drugs? The nights you spend crying yourself to sleep? Sure. Go ahead and put on that “Hello My Name is: WET BLANKET” sticker on your shirt! There will be updates on friends and family. Judy is pregnant. Susie just had a baby. And Lisa just had her 5th baby!! Each one is like a dagger to your aching heart. You may even hear one of your family members saying how thankful they are to be able to send their kids to another table so they can have some peace and quiet. (Believe me as a mother of three now…I GET IT!! But it still hurts to hear.) Your heart breaks because you would give anything to have every second of your day consumed with a precious child. Do they realize what a blessing they have? You try hard to focus on the blessings you have in your life. However, the hole in your heart that only a child can fill, feels so hollow today. Will it be filled by next Thanksgiving?

Christmas. In 2013, it started before the holiday. I was ordering my Christmas cards. I had it all planned out. The cute Christmas card with a clever pregnancy announcement all in one. It was going to be so precious. But things didn’t go according to my plan. After nearly a year of fertility treatments, there was no announcement to be made. I just had a broken heart that no one even knew about because infertility just isn’t something that you talk about openly.

As much as this holiday should be focused on Jesus’ birth, it is still very much centered around Santa and children. I am blessed to have a close knit family and love to be around them. I am proud to call myself Aunt Teppie to six nieces and nephews. As much as I love them, it wasn’t always easy to be around them. I would spend all day with my game face on. My smile plastered on my face and ready to play. I would fight the thoughts about wishing I had one of my own. I would smile and give a trite answer when asked when Eric and I were going to have one of our own. “Our kids are going to be so far apart in age that they won’t be close!!” “I’m trying the best I can!!” I would scream in my head as I smiled and shrugged.

At night, I would be exhausted from playing the happy Aunt Teppie all day. I was emotionally drained. How long would I just be Aunt Teppie? When would it be my turn to be Mommy? I wanted to be up late at night wrapping baby dolls and toy cars. I wanted to have silly fights with Eric about how to put together the $@$% play kitchen. I wanted to have my baby on my knee reading “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” for the umpteenth time. Would it be different next Christmas? Last Christmas I was sure I would have a baby by now. Will it ever happen?

Oh then New Years. Did I even want to reflect on the last year? Failed cycle after failed cycle. Ups and downs. Waiting for test results. Waiting for a phone call. Waiting for an appointment. Waiting for another cycle. Hadn’t I wished away the better part of the last year? Would next year be any different?

When I think back a few years ago to New Year’s, Eric and I were energized. We were about to start fertility treatments with our frozen embryos affectionately called our “totsicles.” We couldn’t wait to see what God had in store for us because in our mind it meant a baby or even babies!! Unfortunately, instead of a baby it was a year of pain and sadness. By the time New Year’s rolled around again, we were ready to throw a party to declare “So long 2013. Don’t let the door hit you in the …”

Now I look back to last year’s New Years Eve when I was celebrating publishing my book about what I learned on my journey through Infertility. I feel that same energy I felt a couple of years ago but about a completely different journey. God did have a plan for me. I never in a million years would have dreamed two years ago that this would be His plan for me.

So my message for you is to stay strong. When you go to bed feeling emotionally drained, pray. Pray for strength. Pray for patience. Pray for clarity about all the choices you are faced with every day. God loves you and hears you. He will give you the strength that you need.

You may not find out what the plan is for you and your family as quickly as you want to, but there is a plan for you. You may be celebrating New Year’s in a year or two and have a better reality than you could have ever dreamed of…

John’s Legacy – Guest Post by Clair

Posted in inspiration, SLM - The Collective by

John's Legacy

If you missed Clair’s first post, get caught up here.

October 2015

It’s been over a year since we lost our sweet John in the last moments of his delivery. I was told early on that he probably couldn’t survive without being fully reliant on me.  That scenario proved to be exactly what happened. We will always cherish the hours we got to spend with him after he was born, and the pictures provided to us by a Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep photographer.

God truly blessed our family, and we were able to keep moving and looking ahead. On August 10th of this year, our sweet Lucy Cate was born, an 8 lb. 11 oz. healthy baby girl. As I write this blog, she is snuggled up against me sleeping.

So where am I these days with the loss of our sweet boy? What has God shown me? FAITH

The first time I went to see my grandmother after we received John’s diagnosis and prognosis, she gave me some advice that changed my way of thinking. You see, my sweet grandmother had a healthy baby girl. Later she experienced two miscarriages and the loss of her daughter who was born prematurely due to a fall. I can’t imagine what a difficult time that was in her life. Yet until this point, I had never even thought about her grief. She ended up with four healthy children, twelve grandchildren, and to date, eighteen great grandchildren. What a lucky woman, right? What a charmed life. But when she was not so far from my own age, she was relying on faith to get her through a difficult time.

So back to the advice. My sweet grandmother looked at me and said, “Sometimes we think things are going to go a certain way, and they don’t, and it’s hard. But it’s just like it is.” What some might consider harsh words changed the rest of my pregnancy. It was hard, but it was part of my story. My faith would get me through just like hers did.

I began to look at the many women in my life who had weathered hard times in different ways.  Their faith was something they all had in common. They never stopped believing; they just kept moving. I think we so often want to dwell on what’s happening right now and say, “Woe is me.  My life is so hard!” But have faith. God truly has a plan for you. Look at your parents, your grandparents, and you will see where faith played a role. When you feel stuck in a difficult time, look at the difficult times that others have pushed through and the blessings they found on the other side.

I will look back at this time in my life, and hopefully, be able to bless others with the fact that I had faith. I kept going. When my other children are old enough to truly understand John’s story, I want them to see that their parents trusted in God. I want to pass down this legacy of faith. God has a plan for me. God has my sweet John with him. God is good.

Clair and her husband Rob’s faith through such a heartbreaking time has been such an inspiration to me and everyone surrounding them.  Their faith gave them God’s peace and strength in the midst of a tumultuous situation.  Clair’s grandmother was very wise.  We are not guaranteed a smooth road on our journey; however, through our faith, God can help us not only keep going, but find His peace.

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

Baby John, Guest Post by Clair

Posted in inspiration, SLM - The Collective by

Baby JohnAside from my wonderful family, I thank God daily for the amazing girlfriends He has blessed me with in my life. In particular, I have a group of ladies that I have a book club with from church. Even though we have only read 1 – 2 books in the last four years, I know that God smiles down on our time together. You see we didn’t realize it when we started meeting in my playroom every other week, but God had handpicked this core group of 8 women. Over the years we would all share the bond of infertility, miscarriage or loss. He knew that we could support, love, and pray for each other like no other could.

My friend, Clair, went through a devastating and heartbreaking time last year when she was pregnant with her son, John. The strength and wisdom that she displayed was simply inspiring to everyone around her. I am so honored that she is sharing her story of how God sustained her through such a difficult time. The below is what she shared on her personal blog last year. On Thursday this week, she will share her insights she has gained in the last year.

Monday August 4, 2014

I have been considering returning to the blog for a while now, obviously I took an extra long break because I’m just not the best about blogging. A few weeks became a few months and then it just seemed too long. But, as many of you already know, we are expecting baby number three in just a few short days. While I’ve been pretty private about things for the last few months, lately I’ve been feeling like I should share my thoughts on the impending arrival of John.

John is due on August 24th, but we are expecting him to arrive this week. We found out in March that this sweet boy has Trisomy 18. At the time, they couldn’t tell us anything about how long we might have him with us. The timeline was anywhere from losing him sometime during the pregnancy to him living for years, but we always knew that most likely we were looking at a very short time with him. Now, it seems that the time to meet John has arrived. As of now, he’s still hanging on, but with some pretty serious issues that they found a few weeks ago. From what we understand, they do not expect him to live long at this point.  We are just hoping to say hello before we have to say goodbye.

After months of processing this information I know this…if there is one job I have as a mother to my boys, it’s to teach them about Jesus. It’s to help guide them so that one day they accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. It’s to help them grow into strong Christian men. It’s to help get them to Heaven. And now, with John, I’ll skip a lot of those steps, but I know he’s going to be in Heaven.

Do I want him to be here with me? Absolutely! Am I going to be so sad to lose a child, a person that I’ve loved and felt and carried since I found out about him in December? Of course. We pictured our lives with three boys under 4. We were preparing for the madness of a new baby along with two toddlers. I can still imagine these three boys growing up together, and I know it’s not going to happen. But something even better is waiting for John. He gets to skip all of the growing pains and mistakes of life. I get to see him again. I have years of hard work ahead to help mold my boys and hopefully to help lead them to make the decision for Christ. John is already going to be with Jesus. I can’t possibly ask for anything greater for my child.

Obviously, I don’t know exactly how Heaven works, and I won’t know until I’m there. But I like to think that John is going to meet my grandfather, who he’s named after and who I’ve always wanted to meet. I like to think that Celia, my aunt, who I’ve missed for the last three years, will be there waiting for him. She absolutely loved babies, and she loved me. Now she can love my sweet boy when I can’t be there. Not that he will even need anyone else there at all because John will finally be whole in the arms of Jesus, and that is the best love of all. I wish I could keep him here with me, but I’m excited for him to be with Jesus.

I know that the next few months are going to bring a wave of emotions. I know that I will have happy times and sad times. Good days and bad days. I know that I need prayers more than I ever have. But on the days when things are really tough, I can remind myself that he is in a better place than I can even imagine.

How Am I Still Standing?

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God can open doors to new friendships when you least expect it. On the first day of Kindergarten, I was excited about the new friendships my children would make. I was pleasantly surprised when I made some new friendships of my own with their friend’s moms. One of my friends, Devon, and I have grown close over the last three years as our children have become quite the bosom buddies. She has held my hand and prayed for me during some of the most difficult times. I absolutely treasure her friendship.

This summer she encountered a crisis of her own that I was able to help pray through with her. She shared with me a blog that she wrote to help deal with her intense grief. I felt so blessed by her refreshing honesty and amazing faith. She bravely agreed to share her experience so that you too can be blessed.

Psalm 73:26  “My flesh and heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and portion forever.”

Life was going along swimmingly.  We had “survived” 3 surgeries in 2 months at the beginning of the school year, and we were coasting our way into summer. My husband, Tom, and I had been praying about putting our house on the market. Our prayer was quickly answered by a couple wanting to buy our house before it was even listed!

Excellent, prayer request answered!

We found a house to buy with all of our wish list items and were able to close and get some work done before we even moved in.

Fantastic, prayer request answered!  

As the school year came to a close, we prepared to move again (for the 7th time in our marriage!). I had no stress about it; we had moved so many times I felt like a pro!

You know, there is a list of “Top Stressors in Life.” Moving is #3.

Well that’s when life got interesting.  On top of moving, I was planning a big birthday celebration for Tom. We had family and friends coming in from out of town.  That by itself was not stressful.  However, add moving two weeks before said friends arrive….it becomes somewhat stressful.

On June 2nd, three days after moving in, my dear friend, Melissa, took my three kids for the morning. I desperately needed some uninterrupted time to tackle my to-do list!

Great, prayer request for time to get things done!  Answered!!!

Then the bottom dropped out of my little world that I felt so in control of.  I returned home to find my parents at my

Devon & Her Cousin

Devon & Her Cousin

house with awful news that my cousin, who was four years younger than me, had been murdered.  Yes, murdered.   I am thankful in hindsight that my kids were not home to see the reaction I had.

An instant shattering of ones heart is not a pleasant thing to witness.

Remember that list of “Top Stressors in Life??” Death of a loved one is #1 on that list.

Over the next two weeks I had to function like a normal person, unable to grieve freely.  I had three young kids at home, a party to plan, and boxes to unpack.   Through it all I would lay awake at night and I just kept thinking, how am I still standing?  How am I moving through each day in one piece?

And I heard this still small voice saying, “I am the One that sustains you.”

I knew this.  The funny thing was…I hadn’t asked for God’s strength.  In fact, I hadn’t been talking to God at all.  I tried, but I just didn’t have any words to say. He was the one keeping me upright, keeping my path straight, sustaining me, giving me grace for each day, and I didn’t even have to ask.   What an amazing thought!   God knows what we need even when we don’t know what we need.  His loving kindness never fails!

1 Peter 5:7  “Cast all your cares on Him, because He cares for you.”

Psalm 34:18  “God is near to the broken hearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

I don’t know if you are in a season of busyness, stress, or grieving. Or all three!

But I do know that if you are exhausted, Jesus gets it.

If you are overwhelmed, Jesus gets it. 

And if you are angry and life seems unfair, HE GETS IT!

Psalm 121: 1-2 “I lift my eyes up to the mountains; From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, Who made heaven and earth.”

I also know that there are some things we experience in this life that we will NOT get answers to this side of heaven. That is a hard truth.

We can find hope and peace when we accept that our “whys” rest on the God who knows the beginning and the end.  And His way is perfect.

1 Corinthians 13:12  “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known.”

How inspiring to be able to find solace in Jesus’ arms and to be reminded of His faithfulness in such a tragic situation.  If you would like to contact Devon, her email is dlh.cunningham@gmail.com.