Boogers on the Wall

I can’t tell you how many times I had to silently tell myself to smile and be grateful this past Mother’s Day. It has been a long month and a hard season of smiling through my tears.

I should naturally smile and be grateful for the two beautiful, charming boys I get the privilege of raising here on earth. They really are my whole world and I dedicate my entire life to them.

But Mother’s Day is hard now that I’m a mother to an angel. It’s painful to me that I completely failed at my most recent attempt at motherhood. It’s even more painful that since my child was stillborn, I can’t see him, hear him or hold him on a day that celebrates my relationship with him.

Instead I get to wear a pearl bracelet that has his name engraved on a silver heart at the end. I hang a heart-shaped locket filled with a tiny set of footprints and his birthstone around my neck. Then before it gets too dark I get to stop by the cemetery in the cold rain to leave a handful of tulips from my flowerbed on his headstone.

It’s just so hard to smile when I can’t be a mother to all of my children right now. I’ll admit it. I’m having a hard time with his death. Especially on days that celebrate motherhood.

Days where we have a Sunday school lesson on the shepherd who leaves his flock of 99 to tend for the one sheep who is lost. I feel like that shepherd. I love my flock — I wouldn’t trade my two- and four-year-olds for anything — but I still yearn to bring that one lost lamb back to my fold. Only no matter how much I search, my lamb isn’t coming back. Not right now.

I hate feeling down and gloomy. I hate feeling like I am ungrateful. I’ve got to figure out a way to focus on the positive impact Luca’s short life had. I’ve got to remember the tender mercies I’ve received since his death. The times I’ve felt him near. I have to stay focused on the future — the big day I get to hug him in heaven.