A Dance of Living on Earth and Longing for Heaven | Hope After Pregnancy or Infant Loss

by Courtney Welch

Our Mayla Grace was born still on October 28. After fighting against all odds for 36 weeks and four days, her little heart just couldn’t take it anymore.

My husband, Jason, has always said that he hopes he is alive and on earth when Jesus comes back. I would always get sad when he said this because I personally wanted to have my babies and watch them grow up, get married, and have babies of their own—and, if I was lucky, get to watch them grow up and maybe even get married and have babies of their own. I wanted to live a long, full life.

After losing my daughter though, I find myself longing for heaven because I know, through Christ, that is where I will see her again—alive, whole, healed, and even more perfect than she was when I finally did get to meet her.

At the same time, I know I cannot—nor do I want to—will my days away. I know that God has numbered each of my days here on earth and that He has called me to live those days with purpose—the greatest purpose being to bring Him glory and to point others to Jesus.

My daughter did exactly this with the 36 weeks and four days God had numbered for her life.

The loss of her life has both devastated and inspired me. It has devastated me to a depth of darkness I had never known possible and it has inspired me to squeeze everything that I can out of the rest of the moments, days, or years left in my life and to live them in her honor.

The truth of the matter is that you can somehow, through what-seems-to-be a divine miracle, live in the middle of those two desires—to desperately ache for heaven and to purposefully march forward through life on earth—and I have actually come to find it quite the beautiful existence as it has remarkably carried me through days drenched by the seemingly unbearable weight called grief.

I think when you have experienced such deep loss, you have been exposed to limits that you previously never knew existed. You have come face-to-face with death, after all, and if you have experienced pregnancy loss, you have literally housed death. It sounds cliché but when this is your reality, you begin to perceive life through an entirely different lens. The little or ordinary or unimportant things seem to morph into—dare we call them—joys.

It’s like your mere existence becomes this pain and privilege all at once and, while you stretch between these extremes, the experience almost leaves you levitating and existing in a dimension that is so unique it is almost indescribable.

I guess you could describe it as “hope.”

Wikipedia says that hope means “to expect with confidence" and "to cherish a desire with anticipation."

I love the word cherish, especially when I think of my baby girl. I cherish the short time that her heart beat—even if it was only in the womb. I cherish the great impact it had on my faith and of those who have heard her story. I cherish the tangible love my family and I were given as our community served us as the hands and feet of Jesus. I cherish the kindness of God in taking our sweet girl straight from the safety and comfort of my womb to her everlasting home without ever having to suffer the pain that was surely awaiting her.

I cherish that God has given us a hope in Heaven—a desire with anticipation, an expectation with confidence—so that I can one day get to know who my sweet baby would have been.

Hope – it’s a dance of living on earth and longing for Heaven.

Meet the Author: Courtney Welch

Courtney is a wife and a mother of two—one on earth and one in heaven who loves Jesus, chocolate, and writing. Her greatest passion is to be still before the Lord and to submit to the prompting of the Holy Spirit as it leads her to point people to Jesus.

Connect with Author: @courtney_jo5/