Too Much

Sometimes it's too much.  Sometimes the stories and the tears and the empty arms are just too much.  I should back up.  I help with a support group for perinatal and infant loss.  That is anyone who has ever lost a baby whether they ever took a breath or not, whether that baby had only lived inside of his momma for 9 days or 9 months.  Any momma (or daddy) who has ever dealt with a loss is welcome to this group.

I've heard stories.  Stories that will bring you to your knees.  Stories of broken hearts, broken hope, broken relationships.  Just brokenness.  Stories, that bring me straight home to where my babies are sleeping.  Stories that totally make me see through the mischief of the day to the blessing of every single breath that my babies take.  I am blessed and I am grateful for the reminder but sometimes it is too much.  The pain that I see on the faces of these mommas is untouchable.  They can't be fixed, nor do they want to be.  Being fixed means that piece that they're missing never existed.  That the baby that brought them to our group didn't happen.  These mommas' lives are upside down and inside out and all I want to do is say something that will put something back in its place.  Something that will lift a small corner of the grief filled box that is sitting on their chests making it hard to breath. But who am I?  I sit there with nothing other than my own losses as my training.  There's no PhD at the end of my name and no Dr. at the front of it.  But there I sit just praying that God will give me the words that He wants these mommas to hear.  Most of the time I fail but I pray that if nothing else these mommas leave without feeling alone.  I pray that these mommas leave without thinking that their baby was forgotten by the world.  God has been so good to me and carried me through things that I sure couldn't have gone through alone and I just pray that He will do the same for these women.

Tonight was hard.  It was too much.  I feel like I have no business being one of the people that these ladies come to in the midst of their broken worlds.  I sure don't deserve that privilege but God has put me there.  And I just pray that He will drive this program to a place that brings glory to Him.  To a place where these mommas find purpose in an impossible situation.  I pray that they use their babies lives, no matter how brief, to change the world.  To remind the world to see, I mean really see, their blessings.  I know I am grateful for the reminder and for the opportunity to sit with these brave mommas.  So tonight in the midst of it all being too much, I'm just grateful.  Just so grateful.