By Monica Lewis, Minister to Children, Students and Families

On Oct. 15 at 7:00 p.m., in observance of the International Wave of Light, I lit a candle in my living room in front of a picture that references Isaiah 54. “Though the mountains will crumble, you will not.” When I lit the candle, I didn’t even think of its placement. It wasn’t until I bent down to take a picture to post on social media that I recognized the words behind the candle. That reference to Isaiah sits in that spot in my house every day.

When I lit that candle, I did it for so many people. For friends and family. For friends of friends. For people I know only through blogs or other social media. For myself. For babies who so many of us have lost. For babies who remain only in memory. For sonogram pictures. For split cells that didn’t implant. For still births. For miscarriages. For infants who have died in their sleep. For all the babies and all the mothers who feel left without a label…mothers who feel like they don’t fit into any camp. Mother? Survivor? Victim? Fertility warrior?14671294_969108253233282_6907274692280207133_n

In these moments, politics don’t matter. Religious understandings about the beginning of life don’t matter. What matters is on an individual level. What matters is the feelings and the experiences of each of the mothers, fathers and family members who’ve experienced loss. The woman with the enlarged picture of the cells splitting for her failed IVF attempt is grieving. The couple who was adopting a baby that was delivered still is grieving. Sometimes you know who they are—more often, you don’t. There are parents among us who no one realizes are parents. But they are.

It is a long road from one side of loss to the other. And it’s never fully resolved. Parents are never “healed” of their grief. In fact, it’s often their grief that allows them to feel connected to their child. But what those of us on the other side of grief know is that, even when we feel totally alone, God is always with us. God cries and mourns with us. And God continues to love and usher us through the worst moments in life.

Each year we recognize October as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness month and Oct. 15 as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. If you know of someone who has experienced their own loss please love on them this month. If their child was named, speak the name of him/her to his/her parents. Recognize that parental grief is real and fluid—it will come and go in waves for the rest of their lives. And when you connect with them remember that it may be God acting through you speaking the prophetic words that were spoken so long ago and are just as alive today, “Though the mountains will crumble, you will not.”

-Monica