To the Mamas of Angels

I know the pain that Mother's Day can bring.  I know the feeling of the hurt in your heart that you experience every single day, the one that is only magnified on this day that celebrates everything contrary to what you feel:  Life.  Love.  Hope.  Motherhood.

Even as I snuggle with my three sweet children, my heart yearns for the two that I will never know on this earth, my two precious angels in heaven.  My heart will forever be incomplete.

When you lose a child, you lose a part of your heart.  And you never get it back.

Two pieces of my heart will always be missing.  The loss of a child is not something your mama's heart ever gets over.  To tell the truth, I'm not sure it's something your heart was made to get over.  The very nature of my heart, of your heart, of every mother's heart, was made to hold that child.  Forever.

For whatever reason our arms our empty -- miscarriage,  stillbirth,  abortion -- it doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter how they died.  It just matters that they lived.  No matter how briefly, your child lived.  

I can't pretend to understand the agony of infertility, nor the despair in the inability to carry a child to term, nor the pain of abortion.  But I do know the heartbreak of miscarriage.  I do know what it feels like to have babies in heaven, to have a heart that will never be whole.

One of the hardest parts of my first Mother's Day was the feeling that I wasn't a mother.  I felt like I was drowning in grief, having miscarried only a few weeks before, watching all the mothers in the church stand to be honored.  I fought the tears that threatened to overwhelm me.  Drew squeezed my hand, gently urged me to stand also, but I couldn't.

I'm not a mother.  I may never be.  The thought glued me to my seat.

But it was a lie.

I was a mother, even though my baby was no longer living.  Believing that lie was like saying my child had never existed.  But he had.  For almost four weeks, he had lived in my womb.  And as soon as he ceased to be alive, he awoke in the arms of Jesus, where he still lives.

Hear me, mothers.  That voice that denies you your rightful title of mama?  That voice that dismisses the life of your child, however brief?  It is lying.  Please don't believe that lie.

You are a mama, an angel's mama.