If you asked me when the New Year of 2025 rolled in what the year would look like I would have told you a very different story than what my reality held. I pictured I would have another baby with me now and when I got pregnant in February that felt like confirmation of my hopes and dreams. I imagined this holiday season vividly—a quiet house lit by a Christmas tree, punctuated by the soft squeaks and sighs of a new baby who would have been here by now. I imagined myself tired—but the good kind of tired—figuring out how to be a mom of two while drinking peppermint coffee and shedding warm layers to bring a baby close to feed.
But the story changed.
And as we move into Advent, I’m realizing how many of us are walking into this season holding two things at once: gratitude and grief, hope and disappointment, expectation and the gentle ache of what could have been.
For me, that tension feels tangible and embodied. I pulled an ornament meant to represent our loss out of a package and looked it over for the first time in my car. While my fingers ran along the ribbon and wondered what it would have been like to meet that baby, there was a flutter of another baby rolling within me like a soft reminder: I’m here now.
And I was flooded with gratitude for the privilege and honor it is to carry a life. I’m so deeply aware of how little is in my control after loss—and I’m so profoundly thankful that God still chooses to give us good gifts.
The tension of missing a baby who isn’t in my arms is starkly contrasted by the gratitude of carrying another baby who is constantly reminding me with kicks and wiggles that they are here right now. It’s the strange and holy place of feeling deeply grateful and simultaneously sad—and knowing I don’t have to resolve either emotion before lighting the next candle.
Advent is, after all, a season built for this kind of tension. We’re celebrating a promise kept, while still waiting for every promise to be fulfilled. We’re holding joy in one hand and longing in the other. The first Advent story wasn’t tidy—there were detours, waiting, fear, unexpected visitors, and a teenage girl whose life changed in a moment she didn’t ask for.
Advent feels honest to me this year.
I can be grateful my baby is in heaven, held in perfect love, in a place without pain or confusion or waiting. And I can still cry in the quiet moments when I wonder what it would have been like if my baby made it here to be known and held by us.
And there’s this new life inside of me, reminding me that God is always doing something new, even if that timeline doesn’t make sense to us. Every flutter is a reminder that hope persists—it keeps pushing us forward, urging us on, even with our longing and sadness.
Maybe this season looks unexpected for you, too. Maybe you thought this year would bring healing or reconciliation or a clear next step—and instead, you’re navigating something harder or quieter or just…different. Maybe you’re carrying a joy no one else can see yet. Or grieving a loss no one else knows about. Maybe you’re doing both.
Here is what I am reminding myself as we welcome December and Advent season: I don’t need to pretend this season is only sweet or only sad. Advent gives us permission to sit in the middle—where God always is and always will be.
I can hang my family’s stockings and still feel the ache of an empty space. I can light candles and still feel darkness looming. I can be overwhelmingly grateful for all we have been given and still feel heartbroken over what was lost. I can laugh at the chaos of Christmastime with a toddler and still tear up at reminders of the baby we lost.
This is the kind of waiting Advent teaches us—it is not passive, not pretend, not polished but it is an expectant, honest, full, and deeply felt waiting.
If this season finds you in a story you didn’t choose, or one you never would have written yourself—take heart. May this December be gentle with you, may you be surprised by the gifts of joy and the gifts of sorrow and may God meet you with his steady presence right where you are.
