PAIL Awareness Day Again

I looked at the clock and realized I was 2 minutes late. Willing myself to get up, even though it worsened my migraine, I walked into the kitchen to get a lighter and then into the bedroom to get Jack and Judah’s candles. 

This was my 6th year lighting these candles – the first year I used a different one I’d had in a lantern. The second year I briefly remember running to Hobby Lobby with my eight-month-old the day of, desperately searching for new candles. I don’t know what happened to the first one. Maybe it was lost when we moved. 

I brought them out, searching for a place to put them and take a picture for this year. The house is a mess. The kitchen counters are covered in dishes from making dinner, the dinner itself still on the stove, on low heat, staying warm, waiting for my husband and oldest living to come back home and join us.

The living room and kitchen table are covered in toys and books – evidence of a day of children playing. I can’t be mad at it – there was a day I thought I would never have a living child in my house, let alone three. 

My daughter, just three years old, saw the candles and asked in a way that showed she was excited, “Oh! What are those for, Mama?” She’s only ever known candles to be for birthdays or ambiance. 

“For Jack and Judah, sweetheart,” I answered.

“Oh, okay.” She goes back to playing, resolved to know that it’s for them. She doesn’t understand that they’re more than what she sees – pictures on the wall.

I took them into our room into a newly cleared-out corner that used to be my office space. Two prints from Mother of Wilde hang there still, a little oddly out of place without the desk to hang over. I quickly snapped my picture, took the candles to the kitchen table, and then sat back down and posted them to my Instagram stories. It was all I could manage for the moment – I was on the third day of monster migraines with no end in sight.

Over the years, we’ve done different things to observe Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. There were a few years when I was asked to photograph the local Hope Mommies Chapter’s butterfly release. But most years, it passes silently, with me simply lighting these candles. 

2021 was the year I left them burning a little longer and a little closer together. That year, they melted together. One candle for each of my boys gone too soon now inseparable, just like they are in heaven.

Leading up to today, I’ve been thinking a lot about salvation, the hope of heaven, and the day I get to rejoin Jack and Judah. And thinking about how it’s unfair that I’m still stuck here, waiting.

It’s been 11 years since we lost Jack. Just over 7.5 since we lost Judah. And still, we wait. We wait for a promised day of no more pain or tears while pain and tears become familiar companions.

Grief almost seems more like a welcome friend these days – in the busy chaos of parenting three littles, it’s hard to have a moment to grieve. So when I do get the chance to sit and remember those sweet little boys, it’s like sitting with a friend who won’t forget them either. Because that grief is really just all my love for them. A love that won’t forget. 

On days like today, it can be easy to fall into deep grief – I felt more of it today. While I do believe that we should honor grief when it needs to come out, we also need to remind ourselves that while we are one day further from the day we saw our babies here on earth for the last time, we are also one day closer to seeing them again in heaven. We need to remind ourselves of hope.

On days like today, the extra grief-y days, the extra hard days, we need to lean in closer to the Savior. He doesn’t push us away and wants us to keep our emotions to ourselves, He welcomes them and wants us to bring them to Him. The Psalms are full of questioning God and deep emotions. Jesus Himself wept over his friend Lazarus, over the city of Jerusalem, and the destruction He knew was coming for it, and even in the Garden of Gethsemane as He pleaded with His Father not to make Him suffer. 

Jesus is called a Man of Sorrows. 

As Clint Watkins puts it in his book Just Be Honest, “The wise do not skip past grief to gladness. Rather, they know that grieving decongests the soul and opens it up to deeper joy, ‘for by sadness of face, the heart is made glad.’ (Ecclesiastes 7:3) This is what Jesus displays at Lazarus’ tomb. Wisdom weeps.”

A wonderful enigma exists in the Bible – it tells us to rejoice in suffering because it makes us more like Christ (Romans 5:3-5). Everyone has their thoughts on this, I’m sure, but it’s not until we suffer that we realize what this verse is saying. 

No one wants to go through suffering, but what if we can use it to create deeper meaning in our lives? What if we let go of it, give it to Christ, and let Him work it together for our good?

Then something amazing happens. We become someone we never knew we could be – someone who has seen the incredible goodness of God to take something so horrible and turn it into a testimony of love, hope, and perseverance. A testimony that makes others stop and wonder how it is that we are still standing so strongly.

Not by my strength but by His (Zechariah 4:6).