Not that all of these posts aren’t personal and vulnerable in nature, but this one is so close to my heart it’s hard to share. It’s birthed from complete heartbreak for so many in my life. It’s for heartbroken mothers, the ones that I’ve personally known that had to let go of a hope they clung so tightly to. In my heartache I poured out onto paper every echo of my own soul’s cry.

I know I’ve lived ignorantly. I know in my attempt to help I’ve said hurtful things. I know in my selfishness and pride, what meant to be kind and gentle came across as arrogant and ignorant. I lay these words down here, in an attempt to express the deepest desire that I have. The only hope I can cling to, and the only relief I can offer.

If you or someone dear to you has ever suffered a miscarriage or death of a child, please know this could be triggering for you to read. I say all of the following words as a prayer to God, my heart’s cry for what I find hope in, and a prayer for what will never be here on earth.

I dreamt somewhere deep my soul,
in a place few are set privy to,
where sunsets set fire to dreams to breathe alive themselves an ember of hope,
the kind that makes windchimes giggle and feathers rustle.
In this place I sit, with none but my thoughts.
I sit,
open handed in a yellow warming glow of gold wrapping around the air I breathe
and setting grass on fire in its beautiful, yellow, flirtatious and infectious…glow.
I sit open handed,
breeze blowing,
sun kissing the world goodnight.
And to here I go when the madness and pain wreak havoc on my lungs,
when pens can’t scratch across paper fast enough
the suffocating pain the demons of chaos and death inflict on those around me.
I sit in this place of solidarity,
the only place where I can sit without the constant feeling of bricks tied to ankles pulling me under.
I’ve always been afraid of drowning.
I’m sitting on a log,
one soft from spongy green moss creeping up the sides as
brown bark fights with the gentle love of a dewy, green overgrowth.
Around me butterflies flirt with sinking sun rays and fireflies begin to wake.
I see their faces,
bright and beautiful, sitting among the flowers.
Their hair is a stunning golden hue and almost glowing.
There are only a few, and a few don’t yet have names but are known.
They are the children we never held,
Or the ones not held long enough.
The perfection of souls not inflicted by everything the world refuses to believe that it is.
They’re here with me, in this haven,
waiting for their mamas to return to Eden.
Waiting for the embrace their soul’s always wanted,
patient and innocent they sit here with me-
And me,
caught between the hell of reality and the hope I’m too afraid to share;
The hope their beautiful mothers cannot believe in because
the part of their heart,
their own beating and believing, and existence-knowing breathing
has withered to black eroding dust.
It’s drifted on winds to places too far to return from.
Sometimes memories are more than just files in our minds,
they’re what our flesh has experienced,
caught between its own testimony and our mind’s denial of.
Sometimes it can always hurt to just breathe.
I sit here,
when their mothers are busy becoming stronger and resilient.
While they walk through the suffocating bite of reality that this side of heaven lacks the hope it once promised.
I sit here with my own private hope,
the one where I pray to the Creator of each child
that one day I can witness the homecoming.
Oh that day- when my friend’s breathe deep,
when the shadow lifts and the dust settles
leaving a glittery afterglow,
a physical manifestation of the full restoration and healing my friend’s only ever craved.
When grief maddens and sends foaming, spitting, screaming accusations
flying to whatever it is my friend’s think holds the answer,
I slip back to here:
A place few are set privy to.
Where sunsets set fire to dreams to breathe alive themselves an ember of hope,
the kind that makes windchimes giggle and feathers rustle.