Hope Mommies

2.2.14

    As I mulled around the house while Alex was at class, I finally got caught up on facebook with all of the events that my friends had been participating in.
    One of the groups that has helped me the absolute most with Kaitlyn's death is called Hope Mommies. I just googled through my own blog (remember, I never re-read or edit any of these posts with the exception of the one time I was trying to post a video and couldn't get it to work so I had to come back later and fix it), and I don't know that I have ever mentioned this organization. Shame on me!
     Hope Mommies came into my life through a really interesting way. One of my best friends from High School, named Jarrod, moved to Houston after he graduated from UT Austin with me, and he ended up marrying a girl named Kimberly who worked with him. Now, Jarrod and I have lost touch on and off over the years, but he and Kimberly came to our wedding and we've run into them a few times in Austin when we'd go to football games. I never really got to know Kimberly all that well, but I felt like she was a super sweet person and really made Jarrod happy.
      When Kaitlyn passed, I received a TON of messages on Facebook. This is the age we live in: that people from literally all over the world can send messages and show love with the simple click of a mouse. Anyways, I had a ton of messages and tried to respond to each of them. On Sept. 29, Kimberly sent me a message about the Hope Mommies organization because her cousin is actually the Creative Director for the group. I'm not going to lie- I didn't immediately look into the group. I don't know why. I maybe thought it was too much at the moment. But a month later I was scrolling through all those messages again and I finally took Kim's invitation seriously and clicked on their group page.
      What I found on the Hope Mommies page was instant connection to other moms who had been through what I had been through. They shared their brokenness, their disappointments, their jealousy, and, most importantly, their hope. They shared pictures, concerns about their husbands' healing, concerns about sex postpartum, and even about getting pregnant again.

      Everything was centered around Christ. 

      Everything talked about being firmly standing on The Rock. They constantly updated their status with verses of hope, songs of hope, and remembering their children. I fell in love instantly, and was so grateful to finally have a group of women surrounding me that would understand exactly what I'd been through and be accessible to me at all hours of the night. I felt loved. I felt comforted. I felt supported.
      I began to comment and post in the group, and was immediately met by understanding and prayer. It was one of the most powerful things I had experienced in a long time.
      Kimberly had sponsored a "Hope Box" for me from the group. What a Hope Box consists of is a memory box with a Bible, journal, Book of Hope, and other things that are meant to comfort a mourning mom. It had cards with pretty verses written on them. It had chamomile tea bags, and even a few little things of lotion. It had a note written specifically to me from a Mom named Sarah who had been through something similar to what I had been through (lost her baby boy Holden during birth).
       I was so relieved to be able to connect with a large group of women who were hell-bent (excuse the expression) on keeping their heads high and their eyes focused on God when their world had collapsed around them.