When Hope and Faith is all we have: July 23rd.....

July 23, 2026

Yesterday marked eight months.

Eight months since my son, Jaxon, went to Heaven.

I thought I needed to do something.

Instead, I did almost nothing.

And maybe that's exactly what I needed.

I rested.

Not because everything was okay.

Not because grief had loosened its grip.

Not because my body suddenly felt light again.

I rested because I have spent so much of my life believing that love always has to look like labor.

For years, rest wasn't an option.

There were medications to give.

Therapies to get to.

Doctors to call.

Supplies to reorder.

Insurance companies to fight.

Machines to silence before they woke the whole house.

Schedules that revolved around seizures, appointments, oxygen, feeding pumps, and whatever emergency decided to interrupt our plans that day.

Motherhood taught me how to run on empty.

Grief is teaching me how to sit still.

Those are two very different lessons.

So yesterday, I let myself breathe.

I went to therapy.

I thought about Jaxon.

I watched Nolin play.

I answered only what needed answering.

I let the rest wait.

For someone else, that might sound like an ordinary Wednesday.

For me, it felt almost rebellious.

Then the day shifted.

Not because anything happened.

Because I noticed.

Darryl was carrying something.

He was quieter.

Heavier.

I asked.

He didn't really answer.

But after almost 14 years of marriage, I've learned that silence has a language too.

He didn't have to tell me why.

I already knew.

Yesterday wasn't just eight months for me.

It was eight months for him too.

We lost the same little boy.

We just carry him differently.

I've learned that grief can exist under the same roof and still speak two completely different languages.

Mine usually wants words.

His usually wants quiet.

Mine reaches.

His retreats.

Mine writes.

His prays without saying much at all.

There was a time when that difference frustrated me.

Now I understand it better.

Love doesn't always look like talking.

Sometimes it looks like making coffee without being asked.

Sometimes it looks like sitting in the same room without filling the silence.

Sometimes it looks like praying for someone because they've run out of words of their own.

Yesterday, that was my assignment.

To pray.

Not to fix.

Not to force conversation.

Not to drag him into mine.

Just to quietly ask God to sit beside the man I love.

Nolin, however, has absolutely no respect for grief's schedule.

He has no idea what yesterday meant.

To him, it was simply another day to laugh.

Another day to climb.

Another day to ask for snacks he didn't really want.

Another day to run from Mommy to Daddy and back again.

"Mommy."

"Daddy."

"Mommy."

"Daddy."

Over and over.

Sometimes I laugh.

Sometimes I answer.

Sometimes, if I'm honest, I become completely overstimulated.

The touching.

The climbing.

The constant questions.

The little hands.

The noise.

The need.

He doesn't ask if I have the capacity.

He doesn't wonder whether today is emotionally difficult.

He's two.

He just needs his mama.

There are moments when every sound feels louder than it should.

Every touch lingers longer than my nervous system can tolerate.

And then...

Almost as quickly as the frustration arrives...

So does the conviction.

Because this...

This is the prayer.

Not a prayer I prayed yesterday.

A prayer I prayed years ago.

Before I ever knew what motherhood would ask of me.

I prayed for healthy.

I prayed for ordinary.

I prayed for scraped knees instead of medical emergencies.

I prayed for hearing, "Mommy," from the next room.

I prayed for a little boy who would follow me through the house simply because he loved being near me.

I prayed those prayers first over Jaxon.

Those prayers didn't unfold the way I begged God for them to.

Instead, our ordinary became extraordinary in all the hardest ways.

Our calendar wasn't filled with playdates.

It was filled with specialists.

Our diaper bag carried more medical supplies than snacks.

We measured medications instead of milestones.

We celebrated oxygen levels.

We memorized medical terminology we never wanted to know.

We learned to live in hospital rooms that became strangely familiar.

And still...

He was the greatest privilege of my life.

I would choose him.

Every single time.

Even knowing how the story ends.

Then God entrusted us with Nolin.

Sometimes I catch myself watching him do the simplest things.

Run.

Jump.

Talk.

Call for me.

Interrupt me.

Wear me completely out.

And a thought quietly slips into my heart.

Maybe this wasn't a denied prayer.

Maybe it was a delayed one.

Not because one son replaced another.

Nothing could ever do that.

Jaxon is not less loved because Nolin is healthy.

Nolin is not loved more because his body works differently.

They are both my sons.

Fully.

Completely.

Forever.

But sometimes God's answers arrive through a story we never would have chosen.

That thought doesn't erase my grief.

It simply reminds me that God has never stopped listening.

Then something happened that caught me completely off guard.

Facebook suggested someone under "People You May Know."

The physician who delivered Jaxon.

I stared.

At first, I thought I was confused.

Then I realized who I was looking at.

If I understand how Facebook works, there's a good chance she's looked at my profile.

And something inside me tightened.

Not because I wanted revenge.

Not because I suddenly forgot everything therapy has taught me.

Because it felt...

Invasive.

Almost like someone quietly opening the front door of my home without knocking.

For most of Jaxon's life, I didn't write publicly about him.

People see my posts now and might assume I've always shared this way.

I didn't.

I couldn't.

Every ounce of me belonged to him.

To keeping him alive.

To learning another piece of medical equipment.

To advocating.

To researching.

To fighting.

To loving him with everything I had.

Writing came after.

After Heaven.

After silence.

After the world stopped expecting updates.

These words...

This space...

Has become another way I mother him.

Every story I tell.

Every memory I protect.

Every picture I share.

Every lesson I write.

It is still mothering.

Just differently.

So seeing her face appear there...

It felt like someone stepped into sacred space.

My first thought wasn't even anger.

It was one question.

What do you want to read?

Do you want to see the birthdays we never got?

The milestones that never came?

The pictures of the life your decisions forever altered?

Do you want to read about the little boy who only had 1,947 days on this earth?

Those 1,947 days were beautiful.

They were exhausting.

They were holy.

They were impossibly hard.

Even our easiest days required work most people never saw.

I refuse to give that moment more space than it deserves.

But I also refuse to pretend it didn't affect me.

Healing has never meant forgetting.

Healing has never meant pretending the wound wasn't real.

Healing simply means the wound no longer gets to decide who I become.

July 25th, Saturday is almost here.

Jaxon's first birthday in Heaven.

His sixth birthday.

I wish I could tell you I know what that day will feel like.

I don't.

I've stopped trying to predict grief.

It has never once asked my permission before arriving.

So instead, I'm trying something different.

I'm meeting it where it finds me.

For weeks now, I've been praying one very specific prayer.

God...

If You won't let me hold him...

Would You let me see him?

Not because I doubt where he is.

I don't.

Not because I doubt Your promises.

I don't.

I just miss my son.

Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I see the same picture.

A tree.

A blanket beneath it.

A little boy sitting quietly with a book.

I never see his face clearly.

I never hear his voice.

I don't watch him run toward me.

I don't hear him say, "Hi, Mommy."

Those are still dreams I carry for Heaven because they never happened here.

But somehow...

I know it's him.

Maybe it's only my imagination.

Maybe it's mercy.

Maybe God, in His kindness, gives grieving mothers pictures when words aren't enough.

Whatever it is...

It brings me peace.

Today I looked outside and noticed a tree.

Not because it was remarkable.

Because it reminded me of the one I keep seeing.

So tomorrow...

I'm taking a blanket.

I'm taking the grief book I wrote after Jaxon went to Heaven.

The book I poured every broken part of myself into.

The book I edited.

The book I proofread.

The book I released into the hands of strangers.

And the book I have never read again.

Not once.

Maybe because when I wrote it, I was surviving.

There wasn't room to become its reader.

I only knew how to become its author.

Tomorrow...

For the first time...

I will sit beneath a tree with a blanket stretched across the grass.

I will open the pages that carried me through the darkest season of my life.

And I don't know whether I'll make it through one page...

Or every chapter.

I don't know whether I'll cry.

Whether I'll smile.

Whether I'll close the book after a single paragraph.

I only know this.

When I wrote those words, I thought I was writing them for someone else's tomorrow.

I never imagined they might be waiting for mine.

~ST- oh wait

P.S.

There is one more person I need to thank.

My sister.

Pam.

People know her as my best friend.

I know her as family.

For more than a decade, she has been one of the safest places God has ever given me.

Some people show up when life is easy.

Pam shows up when life falls apart.

She doesn't wait for instructions.

She doesn't ask me to make a list.

She quietly steps into the places where I no longer have the strength to stand.

When Darren went to Heaven, she was there.

When Jaxon went to Heaven, she was there.

She didn't just attend funerals.

She walked into funeral homes with me.

Twice.

If you've never had to choose where your child will rest, you may never fully understand what that sentence costs.

Pam does.

She stood beside me while decisions no mother should ever have to make were made.

She helped me pick out Darren's clothes.

She protected my peace.

She guarded sacred moments.

She became my sergeant-at-arms when my world had fallen apart.

She kept the itinerary.

She made the calls.

She confirmed the details.

She answered questions before they ever reached me.

She stood between me and everything that didn't need to touch me so I could simply be Darren's mama.

Then, years later, she did it all again for Jaxon.

Not because anyone asked her to.

Because that's who she is.

Last week, I called her crying so hard I could barely get the words out.

"I literally can't breathe."

I couldn't go pick up Jaxon's birthday cakes.

I wanted to.

I had every intention of going.

But grief had finally caught up with me, and for that moment, I had nothing left.

She didn't try to convince me to push through.

She didn't tell me to be strong.

She simply said,

"Lay down. Rest. I'll get the cakes."

And that was the end of the conversation.

Not because she was dismissing my pain.

Because the decision had already been made.

She was carrying it now.

Weeks before that phone call, I had done everything I knew to do while I still had the capacity.

I had started shopping for Jaxon's birthday.

I filled my cart because I knew this week would eventually arrive, and I wasn't sure who I would be when it did.

When I finally found enough strength to press "purchase," I did.

But somewhere between surviving and grieving, I never even thought about decorating his birthday cake.

It wasn't that I didn't want to.

I simply had nothing left to give.

Pam noticed what I never even realized I had forgotten.

She ordered the decorations herself.

She never called to tell me she had done it.

She never wanted recognition.

She just quietly filled in the gaps my grief had created.

This week, I walked to the mailbox and found the package waiting for me.

I smiled before I cried.

Because sitting in that mailbox wasn't just cake decorations.

It was love.

It was someone thinking ahead for me when my mind could only think one breath at a time.

That is who Pam has always been.

She has never needed the spotlight.

She has never needed applause.

She has never loved me loudly for other people to see.

She has loved me faithfully.

Steadily.

Consistently.

The older I get, the more I realize that consistency is one of the purest forms of love.

We've walked through more than a decade together.

We've celebrated.

We've cried.

We've laughed until our stomachs hurt.

We've buried my boys.

We've carried one another through seasons neither of us would have chosen.

And through every single one of them, I've never questioned whether she would show up.

Not once.

Because I know her heart.

Just as importantly, she knows mine.

She knows that if the roles were reversed, there wouldn't be a question.

I'd already be on my way.

That's what sisters do.

As I get closer to coming home, I realize how much I'm going to need my sister circle in this next season.

Not because they'll remove the weight of grief.

No one can.

But because they have spent years reminding me that I was never meant to carry it alone.

Pam...

Thank you.

For protecting me.

For leading when I couldn't.

For seeing needs I couldn't even recognize.

For loving Darren.

For loving Jaxon.

For loving Nolin.

For loving Darryl.

For loving me.

Thank you for being the kind of sister who doesn't wait to be asked.

The kind who quietly steps into the gap before anyone else realizes there's a gap to fill.

You have been one of God's greatest gifts to my family.

And I pray you always know that if you ever need someone to stand watch over your life the way you've stood watch over mine...

You will never stand alone.

AMEN!