To my babies on Sanctity of Life Sunday,

You died…. but, you were not killed by the hands of your own mother.

There is a special day set aside to remember babies who have died at the hands of their mothers. But there is no day for you. To abortive mothers, they say, “It’s never an okay choice to kill a baby, even if it would have had medical issues.” And yet they try to comfort me by rationalizing away the pain of your death by saying, “well.. that miscarriage means that there was probably something ‘wrong’ with ‘it‘ anyways.” To them they say, “you stopped a beating heart.” To me they say, “‘it‘ probably couldn’t have survived anyways.” To them they say, “you may have murdered the person who would have discovered the cure for cancer.” About you they say, “it just wasn’t meant to be.” To those mothers they say, “you will feel guilt and loss for your entire life.” To me they say, “at least it happened early on so that you would not be too attached.” They wait to see those mothers who have aborted their children break down in tears of guilt and shame and loss. But me? They are waiting for me to stop crying and wonder why it is taking so long. They say, “life goes on.” They think that extended mourning means a lack of faith on my part. To those mothers they say, “that child you killed was irreplaceable.” To me they say, “you can always have another baby.”

The truth about you? They. Are. Wrong. They are all wrong.

You are beautiful. Your lives were precious. When we lost you, the whole world lost something too precious for them to even comprehend. Something deep in them knows how precious you are …. but our culture has willfully closed their eyes to the truth and dulled their hearts against their own consciences. Your life was short, you were small, so few people got to see you, but somehow those things do not take even the smallest decimal away from how valuable you were. Every single day that you lived was written for you before time began and every single second of those days, and every second since then, have changed me. Your dad may have been the only one waiting in that waiting room when you died, but it was just as much of a death as there has ever been. You were not, you are not, you never have been, and you never will be an “it.”The truth about you? It is not ok that you died. Death is not natural. It wasn’t a part of God’s good creation. It was not God’s plan from the beginning. And it is ok that our hearts are broken. It is ok that we are in pain. Because death is not natural. It is the most unnatural thing that has ever happened. Ever. The truth about you? You were meant to be. I know you were meant to be because you were. You lived and you were here and if you were not meant to be then you never would have been. The truth about you? I was 100% as in love with you as I ever could have been from day 1. Time would not have made me love you more. It just would have made me know you more. And it is tragic to us that we will never know you like that. I hear them complaining about doing the mundane for their children, or the hard for their children, and I ache to be able to do those mundane and hard things for you. I ache to lose sleep because you are crying for me in the middle of the night. Instead I lose sleep because of the eerie silence….. the silence that tells me that you aren’t here. The truth about you? You were so valuable to me, and to the Lord, and to your dad, and to the world, that if I cry every single day of my life without you, I would never have shed enough tears for you. The truth about you? You are irreplaceable. If all of the children in the world were for me, they would never replace you. They would never fill the hole you left in our hearts; our family would never be complete. I will never stop being sad. I will not stop remembering you. I refuse to stop talking about you. I will never out grow looking at your pictures. And that’s how it is supposed to be.

To my precious brothers and sisters on Sanctity of Life Sunday, we have got to stop being inconsistent when it comes to being pro life. If you are pro life, you are pro every life. YES, deliver those being carried away to death! But, you can not pick and choose which lost life is a tragedy and which one isn’t. I acknowledge that we are well meaning. I don’t think I have heard one single person communicate any of the above statements with ill intent. I know that you are caught off guard. I know that you just want to help. I know that you want to fix it. I know that you don’t want to see me cry. I know that you are scrambling for words. I know because I’ve been there. But here is the thing: you don’t need words. When in doubt: do not speak. There are no right words. I’m not looking for answers. I’m sad and I’m lonely and I’m looking for friends to be sad and lonely with me. I know that you don’t know how to process the loss either. I know that you are just trying to help. In our search to help we have resorted to communicating completely unbiblical statements and we are heaping hurt onto already hurting people. We have got to learn how to NOT be miserable comforters. Job’s friends talked for pages and pages and pages of Scripture and Job would have been better off without those friends because they were stupid. They said stupid things. They said unbiblical things. Stop it. That is what you are doing. Just cry and be sad. Value life and when life ends for whatever reason you be sad and you stop trying to make it better with what you have to say. Why? Because nothing that you have to say will make it better and if you value life as much as you should you know that to be true already.

If you are pro life, you will be sad for every abortion…… and every miscarriage, too…. and every death, period. If you are pro life, you will treasure your living children, and the orphan, and the annoying neighbor, and the widow, and that random person driving the car in front of you, and the elderly. If you are pro life, you will weep with those who are weeping.

We won’t be perfect friends. Ever. We will fail our friends. We will all be miserable comforters at times. I have been a horrible friend. I have failed them. I have been a miserable comforter. So what can we do? We can trust in the only perfect Friend that we will ever have. And when our friends are in pain? We can be in pain too, and we can point them to our perfect Friend, to their perfect Friend, who sympathizes in every way with our pain and who really does perfectly love at all times.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-29”