An Adventure in Ministry

  This week is Babyloss awareness week where many mums and dads remember their precious babies and reflect on their babyloss experience. Last week I had the absolute privilege to speak at our local baby loss awareness week remembrance service and it was such a special experience.  Six months ago, after 12 years of infertility, we discovered we were miraculously pregnant! Unfortunately a few weeks later we lost our precious and much loved child in a tragic and pretty traumatic way. It was the darkest time of my life, but through this time I learned a lot about grief, about myself and about God. This week seems a perfect time to share some of the lessons I learnt while walking through loss and I pray that it might be useful to someone else as they navigate grief. Don’t grieve alone When we found out we were pregnant, we shared our news with the world pretty quickly. While some people didn’t understand our choice to share so early on, it was the best thing we could ever do, as w...

Today our journey started at Yad Vashem, Israel's holocaust memorial. It is set in a beautiful hillside in Jerusalem and the aroma of rosemary, a herb representing remembrance, fills the air. We are shown round the museum by a guide called Debbie, whose parents went onto the Kinder transport to Britain and survived the war.  Our first stop was to the Children's hall of remembrance, a truly moving place, where the light of five candles are reflected with mirrors around the room. The effect is like a million stars sparkling. As we passed through, the names of the children were read aloud, a seemingly never ending list of names.  We then went into the main museum which followed the story of  6 million Jews who were led to their death. Our guide brought this number to life with stories of individuals who were victims of the holocaust, some who died and some who survived the horrors.  As we made our way through room after room packed to capacity w...