It arrived the day before we left to visit my family for Christmas. A box labeled “in honor of Collier Babies” held reminders of truth that we have reason to hope for these babies we never got to hold. It’s contents wrapped anchor-printed tissue paper included a miscarriage devotional called “Anchored” and my eyes flooded so heavily with tears I had to take a moment to pause, to pray, to give thanks to this God.
Just a few days after I miscarried, I had sat in bed one night overcome with grief, unsure of what to do. I asked Clay, “Do you think there’s some sort of miscarriage devotional I could read?” And here I was, staring at one that had been delivered to my doorstep.
When I received this box, we had recently moved into our new house, and I had been shuffling all the mementos of our pregnancy—of our children—around with me. I’d placed them from room to room. I finally realized I needed a special box to store them in. And well, now I had one.
I placed the items into this box, and as I did so I realized the significance of that anchor I had found months before we’d even begun trying to get pregnant. I’d been worried about being a good mom while dealing with chronic pain. I’d worried about how to juggle a career with motherhood. And as I prayed to God about my fears one day while on a walk, as the follow lyrics played from Rich Mullins’ song I stumbled upon this baby teething ring—an anchor:
“There’s a love that is fiercer
Than the love between friends
More gentle than a mother’s
When her baby’s at her side.”⠀⠀
I felt God telling me he would be my anchor through it all–through motherhood. I’d wrapped it with the gift I’d given Clay when we first found out I was pregnant. And well, we never realized just how much we’d need God to be our anchor through the storm that would come our way–of loss.
But He has. So faithfully.
I was reading in Jeremiah this morning. He was thrown into a cistern. Ch. 38 vs. 6 says, “…and Jeremiah sank down into the mud.” Oh, how I had been in the pit of grief and heartache. Oh, how I had sunk down into the mud of tragic loss. I had never felt so alone.⠀⠀
When I found out about Hope Mommies, an organization with a private Facebook group for moms who had lost little ones, I felt so seen, so known, and almost as if this community had helped to lift me out of the pit as the King’s men did for Jeremiah is vs. 13.
“How bad we need each other.” These lyrics from a song play through my mind. If you or someone you know has recently gone through a miscarriage or infant loss, Hope Mommies is such a wonderful community to help lift you from the pit.
You can visit their website here and request to join their Facebook group here. And if you feel so led, you can make a donation here.
Their theme verse is none other than Hebrews 6:19, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”
Truly throughout this journey I have felt God not only went before me in the storm, but carried me through it, bringing to many little details together to prove His presence and His faithfulness to me.
I was listening to this song the other day by Chris Tomlin in which he sings, “I’ll worship you as long as I am breathing. God you are faithful and true; nobody loves me like you.” And as much as it was difficult to worship God in the midst of the piercing pain of miscarriage, deep in my soul I always knew He was faithful.
I saw such blazing proof of His faithfulness in the fact that this box came complete with handwritten note from an old friend I’d lost touch with from my Young Life days in college. I was blown away at how God had orchestrated that.
And I saw such blazing proof of His faithfulness in the very verses surrounding Hebrews 6:19, words affirming “the certainty of God’s promise” as the header reads. Verses 17 & 18 read, “Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it was an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged.”
Friends who are grieving losses of your own, my prayer is that you, too, would be greatly encouraged by this unchangeable God of such. great. hope.
