“A Good Death” – A Palm Sunday Sermon

On Palm Sunday, one year ago, my wife Jenna went into early labor and began hemorrhaging. She almost died. Our twin sons, Ezra and Leo, were born late that night, too little and too weak to survive. They died. I never made it to church that Sunday. But I want to share with you the sermon I would have preached that morning. It’s a sermon about a hospital room, about facing pain and death, and when I wrote it, I had no idea that I would spend that very day in a hospital room, facing pain and death. In the quiet of my grief, I returned to this sermon and found God speaking to me—in words I never knew were intended for me.

I share them with you now.

An Empty Nursery

New years bring new beginnings, new hopes, new dreams. There is perhaps no greater testament to this fact than the transformation of our empty nursery, whose door was once ominously closed but is now swung open in excited anticipation…

O’ Childless Mother This Christmas

O’ Childless Mother This Christmas, I see you. Today marks 2 years since the due date of our first baby lost to miscarriage. From one childless mother to another, know that you do not have to face this Christmas alone.

See me: A father’s perspective on stillbirth

As we enter Advent, the season of waiting for the Christ child, Presbyterian Outlook is sharing the stories of parents who bear the grief of infertility, pregnancy loss and infant loss. As a part of this series, Presbyterian Outlook graciously asked Patrick to write a reflection on stillbirth from a father’s perspective. Read this, as well as the stories of other parents who have endured the pain of grief, in this remarkable series.

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An Advent Announcement: We’re Adopting!

This Advent, as Jenna and I remember the children we lost and dare dream of the Child to come, we are excited to announce that our own manger may one day be full. We have started the adoption process!

“All is Riddle”

While we were holding our sons in the hospital, before saying our final goodbyes, Patrick read a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson to them, entitled “Threnody.” Emerson wrote this poem after his own son died.

This poem serves as a centerpiece in the final sermon of a 4-part sermon series that Patrick preached on Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son, Isaac.

A Marriage Surviving Stillbirth

“You have lost enough already; don’t lose your marriage.”

What love can possibly survive the pain of miscarriage and stillbirth? As Patrick and I celebrate our anniversary this year, I know now that our love is stronger than our pain, for our love is stronger than death itself.

The Loneliness of Grief

Grief is lonely.

It is like a shadowy darkness that overcomes you, as you stare Death in the face. The ancients called this desolate place the “Valley of the Shadow of Death.”

Journey with me through this lonesome valley, where even from the depths this week I was able to find joy, friendship, and God.

2 years, 2 months, and 22 days

2 years, 2 months, and 22 days ago – that was the day that everything changed when I first found out that I was pregnant. And yet, 2 years, 2 months, and 22 days later, so much is still the same…

Thrown in the Deep End

“I can do the impossible, because I have been through the unimaginable.”

Thrown into the deep end in my first days back in my work with the families of organ donors, I was faced with a choice – would I drown or would I swim?