You are calling me by name.

Haddie Bo Bo,

Yesterday I attended a retreat called “Carried” for mothers who have all lost a child. I was nervous to go not knowing what to expect. I walked in to a room of around 25-30 mothers. Mothers who have walked the same journey that I am walking. Some have walked this road for years and years. Mother’s who have felt all of the same feelings I have felt. The first thing we had to do was put a picture of our child on a board. This board had all of the children we had lost and their names. This was the hardest part of the whole day for me. I put your picture on the board with your name below it, “Hadley Sue Bromley”. I stood back and looked at your picture as it hung beside the others. Tears started to fall, “Why is your picture up there?” I was screaming in my head, “Why my baby?” I can’t even explain the feeling of seeing you up there. My sweet baby. Something felt so wrong to have your picture up there. Like I was hurting you somehow. I went to the bathroom and cried in the stall questioning, “Should I be here?” This is the picture I put up:

Overall the day was very good. We listened to many stories of loss and redemption. I am glad I went and connected with these ladies. Everyone looked so normal you couldn’t tell that they had lost a child. Sometimes in groups I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb. A speaker said it’s normal to not feel like you fit in, to have a hard time speaking, and interacting. I am a changed person, I am not the same, I will never be the same. But those things will get better with time and come back. One thing I was not prepared to do what to talk about you to strangers. People would say, “Tell me about Hadley.” I have never really thought about how I would answer that question. It was hard and I hated it. No matter what I said about you didn’t seem to do you justice.

I was reading Shelley Ramsey’s blog called Grief with Hope and she totally summed up how I feel about my relationship with God. She wrote about time healing this wound. She says, “Time does not heal. God heals in His time.” I believe that with all of my heart. This wound of you not being here will never heal, But God will heal my heart. It’s how I am feeling with my relationship with God. My relationship with God has to heal. Gwen from Starlight Ministries gave an analogy yesterday. She told a story about a Husband and a wife and the wife saw a young couple so in love sitting next to each other in the car. The guy was in the drivers seat and the girl sitting in the middle next to him. The wife says, “Remember when we use to be like that, so in love? What happened?” The husband replies, “I know what happened, I never moved. I’m still sitting right here.” It’s the wife that moved farther away. That’s how it is with God. He hasn’t moved away from me. But because of the pain I am in I did. The thing is I yell at God one minute and the next I am clinging to him for comfort. Yesterday I heard that many of those ladies are doing the same thing….and it’s ok.

Today is Sunday and we didn’t make it to church. I drove to the grocery store and this song came on. It spoke to my heart in the lines, “You heal the brokenness inside and give us light.” “You are calling us all by name.” I know God is calling me by name and he loves me. I knew he was calling my name in that moment. It was the first time since you died that I was quiet enough to hear God speaking to my heart.