Missing You Today, Especially

My sweet Sarah, Monday at 2:09 p.m. Katelyn gave birth to your first niece, Lauren Hope. She is so precious, and she reminds me so very much of you. Adorable full cheeks, inquisitive furrowed brow, and a head full of dark hair.

Katelyn and Phillip named her Lauren after you. We all know how much you loved your middle name, so it brings us joy to remember you each time we speak it. Through your absence we have learned the most precious commodity we each possess in this life is Hope, so how fitting that they chose to combine your name with it in naming her. 

Your dad and I are so completely overjoyed for Katelyn and Phillip as they enter this new season of life. And we already deeply love precious Lauren Hope. But at the same time it brings me once again to the edge of the abyss of the sorrow of your absence. 

It’s another new sorrow. As I saw Kristen and Sophie meeting Lauren for the first time, there was the unavoidable awareness that we were incomplete, you were so indescribably missed in that moment. As I watched Kristen and Sophie climb in the hospital bed with Katelyn, Lauren, and Samuel, my heart ached and longed for you to be there, too.

I know your tender heart would be so sad if we were not fully celebrating the arrival of sweet Lauren Hope with Katelyn and Phillip. So I’m thankful to be able to tell you that our rejoicing with them has not been diminished, even by this new sorrow of your ongoing absence. There is a bittersweet mingling of the joy and the sorrow. The stark bitterness of the sorrow of your absence, having taught us to number our days aright, has actually made the sweetness of the present joy sweeter.

The joy and sorrow are always together. I experience the joy fully, but in the midst of it the sorrow wells again as I miss you. I’ve heard warnings that if bereaved parents express missing their deceased child “too much” they will cause their surviving children to feel less loved. And sort of opposite of that I’ve heard bereaved parents express fear that experiencing joy and celebrating life “too much” after their child’s death means they somehow love their deceased child less.

With those thoughts in mind I’m grateful that I have peace that you and your sisters all know that my love for each of you is forever continually the same, none greater than the other, and none ever diminishing the other. My loving and missing you in no way takes away from my love for them, and my loving, rejoicing with and celebrating them in no way diminishes my love for you. I will continue to love you the same until I see you again, and then I will love all four of you perfectly for the rest of eternity.

The Hope of eternity brings me the greatest joy. I am exceedingly thankful for the inexpressible joy of knowing that because of your faith and Hope in Jesus Christ, and ours, you are not behind us in our past, but very much before us in our future. With each passing day I am reminded I am one day closer to being with you again, and my heart leaps daily at that glorious thought.

But until then I want you to know I’m committed to living life fully with your dad, sisters, brothers, Samuel and now Lauren Hope. I’ve got all your favorite books ready to read to Samuel and Lauren. We’ll be talking a lot about heaven and you, and how one day, in just a little while, we will all be together with you there.

So I’m writing this letter to you for myself more than anyone else. Just to remind myself of these things I know to be true, and to say I miss you.

I miss you every single day. But I’m missing you today, especially.

Sarah Lauren Harmening

Lauren Hope

Artwork by Sarah Harmening