Apparently, We’re Crying Today.

On motherhood, joy and grief, and the unexpected moments that undo us.

Well, I wasn’t planning on crying in front of a table full of women this morning, but apparently that was on the agenda.

I attended a women’s ministry event today. One of those mornings where you get dressed, show up, sit with some lovely women, and look forward to being encouraged.

I was prepared to listen. Enjoy some conversation. Maybe laugh a little. Hopefully leave feeling refreshed.

What I wasn’t prepared for was to completely come undone in the middle of it.

But here we are.

The speakers were a mother and daughter, sharing their story of walking through years of miscarriage, the miracle of finally welcoming a daughter, and then the unimaginable heartbreak of losing that precious baby just three days after she was born.

Their story was about how joy and grief can coexist. How God’s goodness doesn’t disappear just because life becomes unbearably painful.

And honestly, their story was heartbreaking.

I’ve experienced miscarriage myself, so I understood some of the pain they were describing. But as I listened, I realized that wasn’t necessarily the part of their story that was undoing me.

It was the mother.

It was listening to her talk about watching her own daughter walk through those things.

And somewhere in the middle of that conversation, the tears started coming.

Not the quiet, graceful kind of crying where one single tear rolls down your cheek and you discreetly dab it away.

Nope.

The kind where you realize you’re crying, you can’t seem to stop, and you’re suddenly very aware that you’re sitting at a table full of women.

Fantastic.

Just fantastic.

There’s Something About a Mother’s Love

I don’t think we talk enough about how deeply a mother’s heart is connected to her children.

We talk about the sleepless nights, the sacrifices, the responsibilities, and the endless amount of worrying that comes with raising them.

But there’s another part of motherhood that I don’t think can be fully explained until you’ve experienced it.

It’s the way their pain becomes your pain.

The way you can watch your child hurting and feel something inside your own chest physically ache.

The way you would do almost anything to take that pain away, even when you know you can’t.

And that’s what I kept thinking about as I listened to this mother speak.

Here was a woman watching her grown daughter walk through years of disappointment and loss. Watching her experience the joy of welcoming a precious little girl, only to face the kind of heartbreak no parent should ever have to experience.

And there she was, a mother watching her own baby suffer.

Because that’s the thing, isn’t it?

Our children never really stop being our babies.

They grow up. They get married. They have children of their own. They build lives and families and become adults who are perfectly capable of making their own decisions.

But something about being their mother never changes.

We still want to protect them.

We still want to fix what’s hurting.

And sometimes the hardest part of loving someone so deeply is realizing there are things we simply cannot fix for them.

I think that’s what undid me.

Not just the grief of losing a child, but the grief of a mother watching her child grieve.

Two generations of mothers, both loving their daughters with everything they had, and neither able to change what had happened.

There was something so incredibly tender about that.

And apparently, I was not emotionally prepared for it before lunch.

Joy and Grief Don’t Always Take Turns

As they continued sharing, one of the things that stayed with me was the idea that joy and grief can exist together.

I think we often imagine life in seasons.

A season of joy, season of sorrow. a season of celebration. a season of mourning.

season of sorrow.

season of celebration.

As though one must end before the other begins.

But life doesn’t really work that way, does it?

• You can be grateful for the beautiful things in your life while still carrying the weight of something painful.
• You can celebrate someone else’s answered prayer while you’re still waiting on your own.
• You can laugh with your children while quietly worrying about something you can’t control.
• You can experience genuine happiness and still have days when something unexpected brings you to tears.

Joy doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten the grief. And grief doesn’t mean you’ve lost your joy.

Both can be true.

I think sometimes, especially as Christians, we put pressure on ourselves to respond to hard things in a way that proves how much faith we have.

We want to be strong, we want to trust God, we want to be able to say, “God is good,” and truly mean it.

And He is good.

But His goodness doesn’t require us to pretend that painful things don’t hurt.

Jesus wept.

He knew what was coming. He knew the power of resurrection. And still, He entered into the sorrow of the people He loved.

Faith doesn’t mean we never grieve.

It means we have somewhere to take our grief.

Meanwhile, I Had to Pull Myself Together

Of course, after my unexpected emotional breakdown, I still had the rest of the event to enjoy.

So there I was, trying to pull myself together.

Wiping my face.

Taking a few deep breaths.

Hoping my makeup hadn’t completely abandoned me.

Because as much as I was moved by what I’d heard, I also wanted to enjoy the morning.

And I did.

There were still conversations to have. Women to visit with. Moments to laugh and smile.

Which, when you think about it, was a pretty fitting illustration of the very thing we’d just been talking about.

There I was, holding both.

The tenderness of what I’d heard and the joy of being there.

The tears and the laughter.

The heaviness and the gratitude.

All in one morning.

God Has a Way of Speaking to the Things We Need to Hear

I’ve thought a lot about that moment since leaving the event.

It’s funny how God works sometimes.

You can walk into a room expecting one thing and leave realizing He had something else entirely to remind you of.

And sometimes it’s not even the main point of the message that reaches you.

Sometimes it’s a passing comment.

A personal story.

Perspective you hadn’t considered.

Or a mother describing how it felt to watch her daughter suffer.

And suddenly, something inside you recognizes a truth you needed to hear.

I think God does that more often than we realize.

He meets us in ordinary places, through ordinary conversations, and reminds us of extraordinary things.

Things we probably already know.

Things we’ve heard a hundred times.

Things we’ve even encouraged other people to believe.

But somehow, when we’re the ones who need the reminder, it sounds different.

More personal.

A little closer to home.

And I think that’s part of why I was so emotional this morning.

There was something about listening to that mother and daughter share their story that reminded me just how deeply we love, how much we carry for the people who matter to us, and how little control we sometimes have over the things that happen in their lives.

As mothers, we want so desperately to protect our children from pain.

But we can’t always do that.

We can pray for them.

We can stand beside them.

We can love them through the hardest moments of their lives.

But we cannot promise them a life without suffering.

And perhaps one of the hardest parts of motherhood is learning to trust God with the people we love more than anything in this world.

Not because it’s easy.

But because we know His love for them is even greater than our own.

That’s a truth I’ve known for years.

And apparently, it’s also one I needed to be reminded of on a random Wednesday morning.

Maybe We All Need the Reminder

I looked around that room today and couldn’t help but wonder how many women were carrying stories of their own.

How many were grieving something no one else knew about?

How many were worried about their children?

How many were waiting on an answer to prayer?

How many were celebrating beautiful things in their lives while quietly holding something painful, too?

We don’t always know what the woman sitting next to us is walking through.

And sometimes we don’t even realize which parts of our own hearts are tender until someone begins speaking directly to them.

That’s one of the reasons I think gathering together matters so much.

We need other women.

We need their stories.

We need the reminders that our experiences, while different, often connect us in ways we couldn’t have anticipated.

And sometimes we need someone to tell a story that makes us cry in public so we can remember a truth we’ve been carrying around but haven’t stopped long enough to consider.

Would I have preferred that reminder come without the public crying?

Absolutely.

But I’m grateful for it just the same.

For the Mother Who Wishes She Could Fix Everything

Maybe today you needed this reminder, too.

Maybe you’re watching one of your children walk through something difficult and everything inside you wants to make it better.

Maybe you’re carrying the weight of a disappointment, an unanswered prayer, or a circumstance you would change in a heartbeat if you could.

Maybe you’re discovering that motherhood doesn’t get easier simply because your children get older.

The worries change.

The prayers change.

The things they need from us change.

But that love?

It stays.

And sometimes it aches.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with acknowledging that.

We were never promised that loving people would be painless.

And we were never asked to pretend that grief doesn’t exist simply because we know the goodness of God.

We can trust Him and still cry.

We can experience joy while carrying sorrow.

We can be grateful for the life we’ve been given and still wish certain parts of it were different.

And we can love our children fiercely while recognizing that ultimately, we cannot control every chapter of their stories.

But we can keep loving.

Keep praying.

Keep showing up.

And keep trusting the One who loves them even more than we do.

So, Apparently, We’re Crying Today

I didn’t expect to leave this morning thinking so much about motherhood, grief, and the way God speaks into our lives.

I certainly didn’t expect to cry in front of a table full of women.

But I’m glad I went.

I’m glad I listened.

And I’m grateful for the vulnerability of a mother and daughter who were willing to share such a painful part of their story so that other women could be encouraged.

Because today, they reminded me that joy and grief aren’t always separate chapters.

Sometimes they’re written on the very same page.

And that even when we cannot change the circumstances of the people we love, we can continue to trust the God who holds them.

There’s still joy to be found in a life that has known grief.

There’s still goodness in seasons we wouldn’t have chosen.

And there’s still a faithful God who knows exactly which reminders our hearts need, even when we didn’t realize we needed them.

As for me, next time I’ll probably bring waterproof mascara.

Just in case.

With love,

Ashley

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Before you go:

Have you ever heard someone share a story that touched a part of your heart you weren’t expecting?

Or have you ever found yourself carrying the heartbreak of someone you love so deeply that it almost felt like your own?

I’d love to hear your story.