It’s been a while since I last wrote for myself and not for work. Too long to be honest.
These past few months, I’ve found myself reading through some old posts I’ve written - stories about seasons changing, setting goals, breaking up with my phone, community.
One of them has stuck with me more than others these past few months though; He was about to pass by them was written when I had just finished up graduate school, was living in different friends’ houses because I hadn’t signed a new lease, and still didn’t have a full time job lined up yet.
A snippet from the post:
“I really like storms. I think it is neat to sit inside of my house and watch the clouds roll in with the thunder rumbling off in the distance. As the wind picks up, my curiosity overtakes me as I open the front door to experience the power of the storm before the rain begins. When the rain hits, I retreat inside to watch from a distance.
I understand the power of the storm, but from the inside of my house, it doesn't seem too scary. Put me in a car driving 70 mph down a highway in the same storm and it's a different story. A few weeks back this happened to me. I pulled over on the side of the road, FaceTimed a good friend, and sat there scared out of my mind as the lightning cracked all around me and hail pelted my car.
Now imagine what a storm is like on a lake.
With the waves crashing all around you.
With the wind whipping the rain into your face and thunder and lightening on display.
Experiencing a storm from inside my house or even from inside my car cannot begin to compare to experiencing a storm on a lake. It would terrify me.”
The first half of 2025 has felt like a storm on a lake.
Hannah and my world was rocked at the end of December when we learned there was a high chance we would lose our baby in the second trimester. The ultrasound looked normal to the naked eye. But to the ultrasound techs and the specialists in Maternal Fetal Medicine - where we saw our beautiful baby girl, they saw more fluid than they’d ever like to see.
Behind her neck, down her spine, and stretching up and over her head, a fluid-filled sac was starting to cover over her tiny, precious body, while fluid filled from within too. So much so, that the doctors didn’t give us any measurements for how big the fluid-filled sac was - just a box of Kleenex before they told us the prognosis.
"Unfortunately, given everything I’m seeing, I wouldn’t expect your baby to make it to 16 weeks.”
The words fell from our lips as we stared in disbelief, not wanting the doctor’s words to be true.
2024 had started out with so much hope and excitement. Hannah and I got engaged in early January and by the end of April had gotten married.
What many don’t know though is that at the end of June, Hannah took a pregnancy test and the results were positive, but within a week, her body was already showing signs that we had lost that pregnancy too.
The plans we had so perfectly laid out for 2024 and 2025 had come to a halt.
As we sat in that hospital room, it felt like all our hope was lost, again. We were coming out of a relatively quiet and easy first trimester, excited for the months ahead and planning for our first baby to be born in the summer. We were not given much hope in that appointment, but in the days and weeks to come, we were holding onto the fact that our baby was still alive, had a healthy heartbeat, and we were trusting God through it all.
Hannah had already been asked at an earlier appointment if she’d like to do any genetic testing, and we opted to go for it to see if the cystic hygroma (fluid-filled sac) and hydrops (fluid retention in the body) could be caused by a chromosomal abnormality.
As we waited for what felt like weeks, but in all reality was only a few short days, we found ourselves questioning what was going on. Why it felt as if all the plans we had hoped for were not going to come to fruition.
In early January, we learned that Gabriella had a high chance of being born with Down syndrome. We spent the next few weeks researching what life might look like with a child with Down syndrome, and prayed hard that God would clear up the fluid in her lungs and decrease the size of the hygroma.
On Friday, January 17, we went in for our 16 week appointment. Having no reason to believe anything had changed and Gabriella was progressing well, we discovered that she was not moving and the ultrasound confirmed what we had prayed so earnestly wouldn’t be true; she no longer had a heartbeat. Looking at her organs, it showed the fluid had spread to other areas of her body, including into her heart too.
As we sat and grieved, we waited to meet with specialists again to talk through our options moving forward. All along, we knew that we wanted to name our baby, even if she didn't make it. Without having talked to each other, we both had fallen in love with the name Gabriella, which means God is my strength. And her middle name, Hope, because through all of this pain and waiting, all we could do was trust in the Lord and hope that everything would turn out alright.
Losing Gabriella was the kind of heartbreak that leaves you disoriented. Straining. Silent. Wondering where God is in all of it.
In that post I’ve been rereading from 2017, I wrote about storms—how easy it is to feel secure when we’re inside, watching from a distance. But real storms—the ones that toss you around and leave you straining at the oars—demand a different kind of faith. The kind where your faith gets tested not once, but over and over.
The storms mentioned in Luke 8 and Mark 6 didn’t surprise Jesus. He allowed them. And He used them—not to punish, but to reveal who He is. Just like God passed by Moses on the mountain (Exodus 33), just like He passed by Elijah in the cave (1 Kings 19), Jesus was revealing His glory in the middle of their fear. He wasn’t ignoring them—He was showing them who He truly was.
That was the heart of what I was learning then—and it’s what I’m clinging to now. Because this year hasn’t felt like watching a storm from safety. It’s felt like being in the boat, in the middle of the lake, with the waves crashing, the wind screaming, and no land in sight.
Jesus calms storms, but more importantly, He is still sovereign in the middle of them. Even when the waves don’t stop, He hasn’t turned away.