A love note to mamas (and papas) who have lost little ones this year …
by: Theresa Martin, Executive Director/ founder
The lights are strung on almost every home, music plays in every store you enter, and even in your home, your children squeal with excitement … but something within your heart weighs you down. You remember the one who could have been; the little one who is not here. The pain swells, you step in another room to hide your tears. You desire to be able to enter in and celebrate all that Advent and the upcoming birth of baby Jesus has for you—but a heaviness pulls within you. You feel broken—heartbroken. You feel guilty for not feeling the joy of the season, for not being light and carefree. Your grief surges and catches in the back of your throat…how can you enter in when you feel so shattered? You feel you so abandoned; your prayers unheard.
Take heart, my sweet friend. You are not out of season. You are entering a new level of Advent this year. God has allowed you the gift, yes—gift, of holy brokenness. Who was it who was turned away from every suitable inn? Who was seemingly abandoned to be born in a barn with animals? Mother Mary and holy St. Joseph experienced the anguish of being locked out, turned away, left to wander alone—trying to find some place, any place, to be at home. Your heart is swimming in pain and grief. Shut out from the usual comforts and warm bed…but you are not alone.
Jesus was born for you.
He came for you. He came to heal the sick. He came to call to Himself the lost, the broken, the grief-stricken. He came as a baby. He left the throne of divinity and allowed Himself to become the smallest of us, the most vulnerable. He desires to enter into your pain, your suffering, your deepest mourning. The cry of baby Jesus echoes through the brokenness of all humanity. His presence was necessary—for you. Right here. Right now.
Mother Mary, purest and most perfect of all women, had to lay down in a barn and give birth to her child there. She had to flee to a foreign country; she did not know the language; she was pushed out of her homeland, out of her comforts. When she returned, she and St. Joseph raised this child, this Son of God. She never sinned. And yet, she had to watch her perfect Son be whipped, beaten, strung up on a cross. She had to watch her child bleed, be abused, spit upon, and die before her very eyes. Her heart was broken. She was wrenched from within. Her heart cried out in anguish and pain. She was sinless and yet, grief-stricken. She knew He would rise and she knew this was necessary for the salvation of all, and yet, she wept in grief.
Your grief is not outside the season. Your broken heart is exactly the place Christ wishes to touch with His presence. He gives you His mother, a mother who understands your pain. She kneels beside you as you weep, as your body convulses in overpowering cries and you don’t know how you will breathe again…she brushes your hair away from your face, she touches her forehead to yours. You are living a Marian stigmata, a spiritual stigmata. Our Lady of Sorrows, whose heart was pierced with seven swords, binds your heart to hers. Let her hold you. Allow her to breathe new life into your heart. There is a sweetness in suffering when we bind it to Mary and Jesus. It doesn’t take away the pain, but it gives you somewhere to place it.
I am so very sorry you have experienced such loss. No one desires to endure such suffering. We have lost seven babies before they were able to take their first breath. There are no reasons to explain it, no way to understand. Yet, if we but let go—drop all the broken pieces of our hearts at the foot of the manger, the tender love of our Lord will pour over us. You have touched heaven in this death, in this loss. Your child lives in the presence of God, sinless and perfect. Part of your DNA abides within the presence of the Father—in perfect joy. When a heart is broken, Jesus can enter in in a profound way—if you let Him.
Christmas will not be like it was. You can’t go back. You can’t undo what is done. Yet, you can go forward—not in guilt of not being able to be what you think you “should” be, but in utter surrender and vulnerability. You go to the Babe of God as a broken babe yourself—and that is the most beautiful Christmas gift you can give our Lord: your real, broken, open heart—no matter what it looks like, no matter if its not strewn with jingle bells and tinsel—right here, right now, none of that matters.
What matters is this: Jesus loves you.
And He came to give you life and give it in abundance. You are the reason He is coming. He loves you and He doesn’t need a “perfect you”—all He wants is you—just as you are, broken as you may be. You heart is His paradise. He has not abandoned you. He is surrounding you in His love and beckoning you closer.
You are not out of place this Christmas: you are His perfect place. Will you trust Him with the broken pieces of your heart? He knows just how to reform you in a more beautiful way than you can ever imagine!
May God bless you and bring you comfort. We will pray for you.