For the Mothers Who Grieve

The Bittersweetness of Mother's Day

The wind rustles the branches overhead, and somewhere deeper in the cemetery a cardinal chirps softly. It is peaceful here in the way only cemeteries can be. Quiet. Still. The sun dazzles against pale stone as I stare at the dates and dashes etched beneath my feet.

I place the flowers carefully and blink hard once.

“I miss you, Mom,” I whisper.

Mother’s Day is supposed to be a celebration, and it is. But sometimes celebration and sorrow sit in the same pew.

My oldest daughter slips her hand into mine, always sensitive to the pain of others.

“Is Sunshine buried here too?” she asks softly.

I look down at her, tears clouding my smile.

“No, baby. Sunshine is in heaven with Jesus.”

“And Nana,” she adds.

I nod.

“Yes. And Nana.”

Sunshine was my first child. The one who made me a mother. I found out I was pregnant the same week my mother was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer.

Two weeks later, I miscarried.

The Matriarch

At thirty-six years old, I am the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter in my family line. An odd thing to realize at my age. My mother has been gone ten years now. My grandmother went home to Jesus last June.

Mother’s Day feels different now.

I come from a long line of women who loved Jesus deeply.

Some of my earliest memories are of my great-grandmother sitting on her daybed in our Colorado home, her Bible open in her lap while morning light streamed through the window. She would see me lingering in the doorway and smile.

“Come pray with me, Jessica.”

And I would.

My Grammy was a missionary to South America, the survivor of a coup in Chile and cartel carjacking attempts in Venezuela. She was loud in all the best ways, full of joy and dry humor. The kind of woman who would grin and ask, “Why pray when you can worry?”

Dementia took her slowly. Cancer sped the process. When she finally entered Jesus’ presence, I sat at her feet singing “Coming Home,” and those gathered around her nearly missed the exact moment she slipped away because it was so peaceful.

My mother was gentler.

She homeschooled me and my sisters. She taught me to read, sew, garden, cook, bake, and keep house. But more importantly, she taught me Scripture. She prayed for my soul daily. When I was three, she led me to Jesus. When I was fourteen and full of questions, she sent me traveling the West Coast with my grandparents.

Somewhere along that road, Jesus stopped being merely my Savior and became my King.

In 2014, pain in my mother’s spine finally drove her to the doctor. Stage four breast cancer, metastasized to the bone.

Every Wednesday after teaching fifth grade boys, I drove to her house. She became my best friend.

She lived long enough to meet my first rainbow baby, my son D. In February of 2016, she admitted quietly that she was afraid to let go because she worried about my father. I promised her he would be cared for. Two weeks later, she went home to heaven.

The Children No One Sees

I have nine children.

Five wait for me in heaven, perfect and sinless.

Four are here in my arms, beautiful little sinners whom I have the privilege of discipling.

After losing Sunshine, joy became complicated.

When I became pregnant with D, I hesitated to even test. Fear has a way of stealing innocence from motherhood. But six weeks passed, and my ultrasound showed a tiny little boy kicking and squirming.

The first time I felt him flutter, it stole my breath.

Alive. Whole.

He was born healthy that August, our rainbow after loss. But by February, my husband had lost his job in the energy sector, my mother had entered hospice, and D was hospitalized with methemoglobinemia after nitrates in squash caused his blood to stop carrying oxygen correctly.

The doctors told us seventy-two percent conversion is fatal.

My son was admitted at sixty-eight.

I am convinced the prayers of the saints carried us through those days.

D survived. He was released just in time for us to rush to my mother’s bedside before she slipped into eternity.

Life kept moving because life always does.

There were more pregnancies after that. More hope. More fear. More tiny lines appearing on tests while I held my breath instead of celebrating.

The Dream

Blessing came next.

I lost her at ten weeks.

The night before, I dreamed I was underwater above a rusted shipwreck while a baby sank just out of my reach. The next morning during prayer, peace settled over me alongside the distinct understanding that I would not keep this child either.

I birthed her at home and held her in my hand, barely an inch long.

Two arms. Two legs. A face just large enough for features. She was beautiful because she was mine.

We buried her beneath the pines in a place sacred to my husband and me.

Then came Valentine. By then grief had numbed me so deeply that when I lost that baby too, I hardly cried at all. That frightened me more than the miscarriage itself.

The Miracle

When I became pregnant again, panic arrived with the bleeding. My HCG numbers dropped sharply. I expected silence at the ultrasound. Instead, the room filled with the fluttering whoosh of a heartbeat. I broke right there as relief and disbelief tangled together.

My sweet girl A survived scare after scare. Water on her brain. Calcium in her heart. More ultrasounds. More waiting. More prayers whispered in fear.

Then, two days before my twenty-seventh birthday, labor hit hard and fast.

My husband delivered her on our bathroom floor while horrified young EMTs stood nearby trying to catch up with reality.

She was beautiful.

The Surprise

I told everyone we were done for a while.

I was exhausted. Five pregnancies in three years had left my body and mind wrung thin. I loved my children fiercely, but I was tired in places sleep could not fix.

Then another faint line appeared.

I cried.

Not because I did not love the baby already growing inside me, but because I was overwhelmed. Gratitude and exhaustion can coexist. So can joy and sorrow.

J arrived after twenty-seven hours of labor, grumpy from the very beginning like a tiny old man trapped in a baby’s body. God knew exactly what I needed when He gave me that little boy.

But by then I had reached the edge of myself. My husband worked constantly. I was drowning in diapers, speech delays, hormones, and the strange loneliness that can settle over motherhood even inside marriage.

For the first time, I truly thought we might be done.

The Twins

Eventually we decided to try once more. When I became pregnant again, I let myself feel excitement. The nurse congratulated me after my bloodwork, and I drove home smiling.

Then the cramping started. The bleeding. The waiting.

Again.

My numbers rose strangely this time. Then, four days before Christmas, sharp pain exploded through my shoulder.

I already knew.

Emergency ultrasound confirmed two babies growing inside my fallopian tube.

No heartbeats.

I thank God often that He took them home Himself rather than asking my husband and me to make impossible decisions.

I was rushed into emergency surgery.

That was the worst day of my life.

Mentally I stayed steady. I focused on Christmas music, my children, ordinary things. But trauma settles into the body whether we acknowledge it or not.

Six weeks later I returned for a follow-up appointment and had a panic attack in the hospital parking lot simply from seeing the building.

I named them Butterfly and Sparrow.

Because the Father watches the sparrows.

Because He transforms caterpillars into butterflies.

Because somehow, even on the worst day of my life, Jesus remained King.

That loss broke me open, but it also drew me nearer to Him than I had ever been before.

Sassy Pants

We waited a long time before trying again.

My body needed healing. My heart did too.

Then in September of 2021, after two exhausting weeks of prodromal labor, P was born at home.

For years September 11 had carried grief for me.

Now it also carried joy.

This little girl sparkles. She teaches us to laugh, to slow down, to find delight in ordinary things. After her birth, both my husband and I finally felt peace about closing this chapter of our lives.

She was our completion.

Bethan and Child Loss

Perhaps that is why I wrote Bethan the way I did.

In the middle of her story, she loses the son she loves most in the world. That chapter wounded me to write because grief is no longer theoretical to me. I know what it is to carry children in both my arms and my heart.

But I also know this:

God has never abandoned me in my sorrow.

Not once.

With every loss, He drew nearer. He sustained me on days I did not think I could breathe. He placed people beside me who understood grief intimately. He reminded me again and again that suffering is not evidence of His absence.

It was the catalyst that kept drawing me back to Him.

So this Mother’s Day, I celebrate the women who came before me.

I celebrate the children I can hold and the ones I cannot.

And I grieve too.

Because celebration can still mourn absence.

I will probably always count four little heads climbing into the car while feeling in some deep place that someone is missing.

On those days, I whisper a quiet prayer.

“Hug them for me, please. Tell them I love them.”

I will see them someday. Of this I am certain because I have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you are a mother carrying grief this Mother’s Day, I am so sorry. And if you are struggling to breathe beneath the weight of loss, turn toward Jesus.

He is the only reason I survived mine.

The blessed hope I have in Christ keeps me discipling the children He left in my care while trusting Him with the ones already home.

Because God sees my grief.

He sees my joy.

He sees me.

And every woman, whether this day brings sorrow, joy, or both, is fully seen by Him too.