As I sat in that hospital room, everything felt still.
No swishing of amniotic fluid. No monitor tracing a tiny heartbeat across a screen. No rhythmic sound of life filling the silence. Just stillness.
Outside her door was a small butterfly—a symbol placed there to quietly tell others what words could hardly bear to say. Her precious baby boy had died.
A butterfly. A symbol so often associated with new life, transformation, and hope. Yet on that day, it also marked unimaginable loss. It alerted medical staff and visitors that behind that door was a mother carrying a child she would soon have to deliver, knowing she would also have to say goodbye.
Goodbye to her son.
Goodbye to the life she had imagined raising him.
Goodbye to the hopes and dreams she had already begun to weave around his future.
As she labored, the weight of that reality filled the room.
And as I sat with her, my mind drifted back nearly 31 years to a hospital room of my own.
I had walked this road before.
Her words pierced straight through my heart because they were words I had once spoken myself.
“The silence is deafening.”
And it was.
The silence after a stillbirth is unlike any other silence. It echoes through every corner of the room. It settles into your soul. As she spoke, memories came rushing back—what I had heard, seen, smelled, and felt all those years ago. I remembered saying:
“This isn’t real.” “This isn’t happening.” “How?” “Why?” “No. No. No.”
“How am I supposed to deliver this baby knowing he’s gone?”
The questions never seem to stop. The grief comes in waves that leave you gasping for air.
As we sat beside her—sometimes literally lying next to her in that hospital bed, holding her hand, crying together, praying over her—I kept thinking about that word:
Still. Still in the silence. Still in the heartbreak. Still in the questions. Still in the suffocating grief.
She whispered, “I feel like I’m suffocating.” “How?” “Why?” Words I knew all too well.
Years ago, while preparing to speak at the funeral of another infant, I struggled to write what I would say. Every sentence felt inadequate. Every thought fell short. And then I realized why – because when a child dies, there truly are NO words. Nothing anyone says can fill the void left behind. Nothing can mend this particular kind of brokenness.
It is the deepest grief and ache a parent can know—the loss of a child who was loved long before they were held. A child who grew beneath her heart. A child she nourished. A child she talked to, dreamed about, prayed over, and felt moving within her.
A child she named Miloh. A little boy already deeply loved. A son whose life carried countless hopes and dreams. And in an instant, those dreams felt shattered, replaced by what seemed like a nightmare from which no one could awaken.
In one particularly solemn moment, through tears and desperate prayers, I looked down at my phone case.
There, printed on the back, were the words of Esther 4:14:
“And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
At that moment, I thanked the Lord, for my own loss, and for God’s purpose within it. The roo was already filled with compassionate people who loved Miloh’s mama deeply. Yet God had given me something unique to bring into that space: understanding born from my own grief. He allowed me to sit with her not merely in sympathy, but in shared sorrow.
It was a sacred privilege. A holy honor. To simply be still with her.
And as I reflected on that, I realized something profound. Perhaps God has redeemed the great sorrow I carried all those years ago so that I could walk beside another mother through hers. Not to fix it. Not to explain it. Not to take away the pain. But simply to remain. To sit in the silence. To hold her hand. To weep with her.
To be still.
Several years ago, I wrote a blog called Tiny Casket about my own stillborn son. In that piece, I shared a Scripture that has stayed with me through the years:
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”
—2 Corinthians 1:3-4
What a beautiful picture of God’s grace. He comforts us so that we can comfort others. He meets us in our deepest pain so that one day, when another broken heart crosses our path, we can sit beside them and remind them they are not alone. Today, Love and SONshine Ministries has the sacred privilege of walking alongside Miloh’s sweet mama in the days ahead.
Would you join us in covering her with love, grace, kindness, and prayer?
And if I may offer some advice, it is this:
Speak his name. Remember his life. Remember the special dates. Remember the anniversaries and the painful “firsts.”
And always call her Mom. Because Miloh matters. His life matters. And his mother will carry both her love for him and the memory of him for the rest of her days.
A mother never forgets her child. Never.
Miloh has forever touched his mama’s life, and the lives of all of us who have been blessed to walk alongside her.
And for that precious little boy, we will remember.
