As children, we expect adulthood to be an attainable moment that we simply arrive at, and then life begins. I certainly expected that I would feel like a real adult when I turned 18. And when that failed, supposed 21 might be the magic moment. But the reality is that there isn’t any one moment that “grows us up”. This process of growth, of maturation, occurs in countless moments throughout all the years of our lives. But, that said, I can pinpoint certain times that left me feeling just a little more understanding of a new facet of the human existence.

September 21 2017 was one of those days. A precious life, that was ours for only a few short weeks, was gone. An ultrasound technician was zipping her little wand all over my abdomen, taking pictures of everything that wasn’t there while I tried to wrap my brain around the shattered reality I had imagined from the moment I saw two pink lines.

Miscarriage changes us. It was one of those tough, hard earned, pearls on the chain of “adulthood.” It showed me my weakness, and my sovereign God, and blessing in sorrow. It taught me to really believe with Job, “The Lord gives, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” It was a grief like I had never experienced, and even so, one that I found to be more common than I ever guessed.

So many mothers reached out to me at that time and I now know from experience as well as their testimony–we never forget. The due date, the day of the miscarriage–those days are etched on our hearts. We don’t forget for a minute how changed one person can be by one single second of a life. Modern rhetoric is turned on its head by the love of parents for their children. No matter how short, how meaningless in the eyes of the world, those lives are precious cornerstones in our own.

I’m thankful for the time that I was given to embrace that little life. Even though it felt too short. Even though I had to clumsily sort through grief and joy comingling–if we hadn’t lost that life, Sieg couldn’t have been the perfect caboose to our train.

Because even though it feels like we “lost” a life that day, we really didn’t. We haven’t forgotten for a minute. It is stitched irrevocably into the fabric of our family. It has proven how eloquent and purposeful the shortest lives on this earth can be. As my husband reminded me on that hard September day 4 years ago, “It must be a good life to know nothing on this earth but the loving embrace of your mother, and to go straight into the embrace of your heavenly Father.”

A good life indeed.