Last night I had a bit of insomnia. I've found that the hardest moments are the ones in which I can't stop imagining what life would be like if she actually were here. How she'd be sleeping right next to our bed and how I'd be taking pictures and videos of her and sharing them with all our friends and family. How this blog would be all kinds of full of baby-ness. It gets to be unbearable when reality sets back in and I realize that we don't have her and that we won't have another baby around for a good amount of time while my body heals and while we heal. I talked about this in a previous post, but it is just the strangest thing to feel like a mother and  not have your baby. You carry them and rub them and pray for them in the womb and this insanely profound connection and bond develops between the two of you and then all of the sudden its over and she's gone. The connection doesn't leave and the bond is still there. And it's just this void..

I got up the nerve during my insomnia to type "Grieving the loss of a baby" into google, which I've never done before and I was terrified at what was going to pop up..and a lot of what I saw was what I expected--medical related articles about how apparently this is just one of the worst things to go through as a human being. I didn't want to hear that or see that or let that settle. But of course, God knew what I needed and a link popped out to me that was written by John Piper. It was the only link with a picture (of him) by it so it caught my attention right away. Granted, Ellie wasn't a stillborn, BUT the essence of this letter is just so true and so comforting. Sentences in bold are my own emphasis.

Earlier this year, a grieving mother, who recently had given birth to a stillborn son, wrote to me asking for counsel and comfort. The team at Desiring God thought this letter might be helpful to some others, whether other mothers who have lost infants, parents who have lost young children, or perhaps even more broadly.