“Sounds like you’ve been living out of a suitcase all year!”

The words pierced me, validated me, and grounded me all at once. I felt both fully understood and fully exhausted. “Wow,” I thought to myself. “That’s it.”

”Yes,” I finally replied, realizing I had spaced out a bit and quickly glancing back at the boutique owner. “That’s the perfect way of putting it. You’re exactly right.”

Here we are, nearing a year since her passing, and I still don’t regret sharing openly about her and our stillbirth story. Grief still seeps in on big days and ordinary, everyday moments. In honor of what I’m calling her “birth month” (June), I wanted to share the story and meaning of her name.

Friends, in case you didn’t know, I’m thrilled to share with you we have moved to the UK! Bristol, England, to be exact. On Monday, March 25th, we boarded a flight with our two boys and kissed Texas goodbye. While, yes, the move is temporary… we packed all we could into our three checked bags and started our travel across the pond. The boys did great, but I’ll share more about traveling with toddlers later. For now, let’s connect some dots. Since this Facebook post and this Instagram reel, questions have poured in. So, I’ve decided to end the post with a Q+A of sorts. But first, I’ll share how we even got to this decision:

On June 14, 2023, I delivered our third child, stillborn.

These past six weeks have held some of the deepest pain I have ever experienced. And while writing, for me, has always been therapeutic, I began to sense God’s leading to share our story. I just hope a mom out there - somewhere, anywhere - feels less alone about miscarriage, pregnancy loss, and/or stillbirth upon reading this.

Dear reader,

It’s been ten months since I’ve shared anything on this blog. Ten months, too long. No blogs about Josiah and his cleft journey, no further pregnancy blogs, no baby Abner blogs (though he most certainly is now out of the womb, praise God, and growing like crazy), no ministry-related blogs, travel blogs, or recipe blogs. Nada.

I was on a flight to London in late June and I found myself looking around wondering…

On Wednesday, October 27th, Calvin and I headed to the medical imagining facility my OB/GYN sends all her patients to for their in-depth anatomy scan. Not only would we be finding out the gender of baby #2 during this visit, but also making sure baby was growing well and no cleft lip/cleft palate was detected.

Hardest secret to keep from y’all but n0w it’s out so let’s TALK about it! I figured a timeline may help break it all down and help keep me on track. (I’m prone to ramble, ha!) But whatever you do, please read until the end. I have something important to share down there.*

Have you ever thought about the fact that while in the water in order to drift all you have to do is. . .
nothing. Absolutely nothing. Do nothing and you drift.

It may be slow. Probably subtle. A little wave here, another wave there. But nonetheless, if you do nothing, you’ll drift. The same thing happens to us spiritually. When we do nothing, we can drift away. And that is undoubtedly the resounding heart beat of Christine Caine’s new book, “How Did I Get Here?”.

Be advised, Josiah’s palate repair was the hardest thing we’d done on this journey so far. This read may seem heavy, really heavy. But by the end you, parents to cleft warriors or faithful reader, will find hope. As we have. Because as dark as the night may be, the light always overcomes it. Now, let the hour by hour breakdown of this surgery day begin.

I’m just going to get right to it, over the past holiday season our family experienced a big transition. And I’m excited to finally talk about it with you all in this way! Often times we only talk about God “opening doors” in the sense of a new door to walk through. But have you ever considered God may open a door in a way of communicating, “that was it” “you’re done here” “let’s move on to the next thing” “time to go” “walk away” “you’re work here is done”?