Sometimes, not very often, but on nights like tonight, after we took a bedtime selfie – with two stinky boy-children draped across my legs and the pungent odor of J Girl’s feet wafting past my nose – I think about my first baby.

My sweet first child whose life ended before the world believes it began. 

I wonder what my memories would be like with him ~ the physical moments that give weight to our existence.

And the weight of my boys and the warmth of my girl was the kind of weight that has magnitude.

Weight that sinks into my momma-soul, responsible for these tiny humans,

It’s terrifying bliss.

I tucked my tribe under their colorful sheets with simutaneous kisses and dire threats to prevent escape and wandered upstairs to breathe a little.

There is weight to my memory.

Gravity to the inexplicable marriage of grief and joy co-mingled in the beginning that was the end of a precious life.

I bear the weight of the living, yes, and oh I am grateful this day, and all the others, to be their momma.

But weightier on some days more than others, is the knowledge of what I lost to gain.

~M.

*There are so many in the body of Christ that have walked this path.You who have experienced recent loss, and you with fresh grief over old wounds ~ just know I love you.