Posts Tagged ‘Miscarriage’
Advent Week 1: Prayers & Practices for Parents
Easy Advent Practices: Week 1 This year we’re sharing simple (and free!) ways to deepen your prayer as a parent in Advent: an activity to share with your children and a Scripture verse for you to pray later. Light a candle when you get up in the morning, in the bathroom as you get ready…
Read MoreComplicated Joy
For all of the beauty found in celebrating the liturgical year, I find that marking milestones by these holy seasons and rituals has a tendency to make whatever experience that much more intense and emotional for me. Pregnancy announcements during Advent—potent. Witnessing conversion and Baptism at Easter Vigil—stick a fork in me. Gifts of selflessness…
Read MoreA Prayer for Miscarriage
This prayer for miscarriage is featured in the book Pocket Prayers for Times of Trouble (Twenty-Third Publications, 2014). God of comfort, you who are mother and father of us all, hear my anguish at the loss of my child. My heart and body are broken, wracked with pain and grief. Let me bring you my cries and my confusion, my anger…
Read Morethe spiritual side of pregnancy after loss
Pregnancy after the loss of a baby – following miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant death – is a daunting prospect. From a distance I used to think “trying again” or “having another baby” must be a happy, hopeful, healing part of parenthood. (File this away under “Things I Didn’t Really Understand Until They Happened to Me.”)…
Read Morehow to talk to parents after their child died
Many readers have asked me how to talk to a friend or relative who lost a baby. What to say? What not to say? How to start? I know it’s daunting. All parties involved – especially the parents – wish the conversation never existed in the first place. But it’s so important to talk about death.…
Read Morethe trash tells the story
A month ago I ran into a friend as we were both rushing into church from the whipping winter wind. She held the door for me, and I sprinted inside, breathing steam. As we shivered in the entryway, trying to warm up, she said, “Oh! I meant to tell you – I read your book. I…
Read Morefor all our children. tonight and always
This post was supposed to be about children. All weekend I had these wonderful thoughts running through my head. About how much I adore the age of four: how he appears in our doorway in the dark dawn hour, hair tousled from sleep, beloved seahorse cradled in his arm, ready to climb in bed with…
Read Morethe gossamer veil
Spring. I remember standing in the window of our new bedroom, staring out across lush green trees to glimpse the sparkling lake across the street. The clouds were cream and billowy in the sweet blue sky, and I caught my breath to think I could wake up to such loveliness every morning. And then I…
Read Moreon carrying and missing
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We’d planned it perfectly. A baby in early spring, before work got too busy and the summer too hot. The worst of the morning sickness would be passed in time for the holidays, and I could curl up on the couch for football season in the fall when…
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