Life after child loss is full of seeming contradictions.
I am broken yet God is redeeming those fragments and reassembling a life of beauty and meaning.
The cracks are visible but they haven’t disqualified me as a vessel that can hold His love, His grace, His mercy and pour all that out on others.
I’m often scared, but am able to walk into each day brave in the knowledge I don’t walk alone.
Read the rest here: Scared and Brave: Reaching For Jesus in the Midst of Sorrow
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thelifeididntchoose 
I came across this piece of writing a few years ago and I read it often. So appropriate for my daughter Leah and I due our love of beach glass hunting at day break on Lake Michigan. Maybe you will like it too.
The Unfinished Heart
by Joy Gilraine
I was looking for sea glass yesterday and all of a sudden it came to me. These beautiful pieces started as something that was simply broken. Something shattered. It made me think of the times that I broken something that I loved that was glass. My first thought is usually a mix of sadness and anger. Sadness that I won’t be able to put it back together the way it was and anger that it broke in the first place. Then the horrible realization that I will have to clean it up and try not to cut myself in the process. Then I thought about you and your heart. Sometimes broken. Unable to be put back the way it was. Sometimes shattered into a million splinters with only a few shards even able to be recognized. Then the realization that it can’t be put back together the way it was. That you will be hurt as you try to pick the pieces up. Then I remembered that we are not meant to be put back together. We are being made into something new. A heart and life made up of beautiful pieces that were once simply something broken. A heart that isn’t beautiful in spite of being broken, it is beautiful because of being broken. Each piece represents a different circumstance. Some from good things that happened and changed us, some from unimaginable things that came and shattered us. You have a beautiful, unfinished heart. Made of splinters not shaped by waves and water but changed by the God you love. More importantly by the God who loves you. The one who didn’t break you, but instead promised to make beauty from your brokenness.
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Revelation 21:4-5.
I would rewrite this removing the word “simply” the two times it appears because there certainly is nothing simple about child loss.
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