elayah

We miss you. We love you. We are grateful for you.

Elayah

How could we have known that the life within you, would be extinguished before we ever laid eyes on you? The time when you were most filled, appeared to us just as 9 months of being concealed. We knew you were there but we just couldn’t see you. We were awaiting your arrival while not fully appreciating the fact that your presence was already amongst us. Now without you, we’re in the depths of pain and we stumble upon a profound realization;  But how could we have known? This is where grace must be given, to combat the thoughts of welcoming a guilt ridden season. Grace must be given continually while remembering the fragility of being a little ol human. 

“Cause me to know, O LORD, my end, and the measure of my days— what is it? —That I may know how fleeting I am.

Behold, as handbreadths have made my days, and my lifetime as nothing before You. Truly each one is a vapor, each man is

stationary.

For you, the measure of those days was just 9 months. We never got to witness one breath. What hurts is that we’ll never know how your breathing came to an end. What hurts even more is maybe, we’re not supposed to know; at least not now. It’s not that we didn’t care about you. We had plans for you already. Plans for the way your life was supposed to be. Who you might grow up to be. How close you and your brother would grow to be. The activities you would partake in. The standard we’d set up for you for any hopeful future man. The character that we’d instill; and if we could always think of you, we’d think of just how beautiful, beautiful could be. We considered life after your birth because that’s all we were able to see of you; hold you, kiss you. This was the way we felt life with you was supposed to be.

“Why”, “how”, “when”; these common thought patterns have been found insufficient to give comfort to this family and our crushed spirit. Like a river running downstream, negative thoughts flow, shame, guilt: A state of mind for any demoralized human being. The opportunity to succumb to spiraling becomes appealing to the soul that’s grieving. “This isn’t supposed to happen to us.” “Why is our daughter not here?” “How do they get to have a daughter but not us?” “I wish I got to hold you more.” “We should have spoke to you in the womb more.” As our forerunner Job would say, “Should we accept from God only good and not adversity?” We so easily forget adversity is apart of this human experience; with this life indeed comes tribulation. Yet, knowing this in awareness has not made us exempt from the feelings now that we’re living the experience. In the midst of the storm, everything I’m aware of takes a backseat to my feelings of this experience and I mourn.

Elayah, we mourn your death baby. We mourn the desires that we held for our family becoming a party of four. We mourn for the 9 months of life that mommy painstakingly carried you, to give birth and see life had already been withdrawn from you. I mourn your mom having the effects of postpartum without the reward of life we thought would follow. We mourn that your mission on this earth was completed before you took your first breath. At the same time I mourn, I am grateful. I am grateful that your life held such a quality to it that it gave us a 12 months worth of transformation in just 12 hours. I am grateful that through your life, we gained a better understanding and appreciation of life right now and less of building up expectations for the future. I am grateful that through the pain of losing you, your mother and I grew in our partnership. I am grateful for the massive outpouring of love we received from all of you; being able to observe God’s “I’ll never leave you nor forsake you” really ring true.

“GOD has answered” is what your name means. We prayed for you. Then our prayer was answered with fire. The familiarity with fire is that it burns; we often forget another characteristic of fire is that it’s also cleansing. Our prayers for you, involved God revealing a quality of relationship that would draw closer to Him through the loss of you. Because that’s what a relationship with God is. It’s a commitment to a new standard; forcing us to continue to relinquish our finite perspective; with human reasoning failing to provide us comfort. But a commitment to God’s perspective requires enduring through suffering; knowing that His plans for us, demands transcending temporary. In our heartache, we find ourselves being transformed to view life with you as a stepping stone. To view every life situation in triumph, more than a conqueror, more than a victim. God knew that your mission was to draw your parents closer to Your Heavenly Father. He instilled in you a quality of spirit, that enabled you to accomplish your assignment without ever needing to step one foot into our experience. Our moment with you has set us on a path of accepting freedom from our own expectations; desires and wants unintentionally being built so high, it’s only a matter of time before our tower needs to be shaken; toppled to the ground, reuniting us with the dust from which we were taken. Graciously replacing our wanting-ness with a familiar childlike-ness; that substitutes our future plans with a present thankfulness; simply appreciative of every special moment granted. Thank you for giving us the ability to remember that we’re just little children being protected, entrusting all good things to the hands of our loving Father, our Creator in Heaven. And in our fallenness, we feel hard pressed on all sides, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;” to a point of surrender — relinquishing our ways, bending in surrender. We accept that nothing happens to us, it all happens for us.

On June 15, 2026 at 10am, we went in for what we hoped would be our last appointment before you would be born. It just so happened that our appointment was actually Wednesday the 17th, your due date (at almost 40 weeks), yet they made time to see us. Our doctor struggled to find your heartbeat. By 10pm that night your mom had given birth to the body that your spirit once inhabited.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are temporary (transient), but the things that are unseen are eternal.

I pray that in all our bending our ending be found, not in our will but your will be done God.