As I Lay Weeping: Where Sorrow and Suffering Meet Faith and Hope

By Lindsay Higdon

The grief of losing an infant or pregnancy can feel insurmountable.
No matter the circumstances, the experience changes your life—and it can challenge your faith. How can you possibly maintain hope in Jesus Christ in the face of such loss? This book invites you to discover how.
After years of infertility, the deaths of her preterm twin babies, and a miscarriage, Lindsay Higdon came to experience the fullness of hope in Jesus through the emptying of what she held most dear.
As I Lay Weeping intertwines powerful biblical truths with the author’s journey, which includes entries from her prayer journal. She reflects on the road she’s walked and how God has helped her navigate the grieving process.
Written to help others find hope, the book shines a spotlight on stories from the Bible, so that anyone can process grief through the lens of God’s word and find comfort in the arms of Jesus.
If you are overwhelmed by grief, wondering how God fits into the picture of life after loss, or searching for hope, this book will be a valuable resource for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9798385013395

Lindsay Higdon

Lindsay Higdon is a pastor’s wife, grateful mom, mental health professional, and the founder of NatalieAndNoahCo, an ecommerce shop specializing in Christian baby loss and rainbow baby keepsakes. She earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in psychology and minored in religion. She shares stories of stillbirth and miscarriage with authenticity and vulnerability.

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Copyright © 2024 Lindsay Higdon.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

WestBow Press

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 979-8-3850-1338-8 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-1339-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023922706

WestBow Press rev. date: 01/02/2024

Scripture quotations marked TPT are from The Passion Translation®. Copyright © 2017, 2018 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ThePassionTranslation.com.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

"Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org

Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Scripture quotations marked GNT are taken from the Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition). Copyright © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the Amplified Bible, Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used with permission.

Scripture quotations marked ESV taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.

For Natalie, Noah, and their sister in heaven,

Every day I wish you were here.

I love you, miss you, and hope I have made you proud.

See you soon.

You will never know the fullness of Christ

until you know the emptiness of everything but Christ.

—Charles Spurgeon

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1   As I Lay Weeping

Chapter 2   Though I Walk in Darkness

Chapter 3   Going Places

Chapter 4   The Only One Who Knows

Chapter 5   In Need of a Lift

Chapter 6   Defiant Praise

Chapter 7   The Forming of Pearls

Chapter 8   Unshakable (Even If)

Chapter 9   Yet and But

Chapter 10   See You Soon

Chapter 11   Commence the Climb

Chapter 12   Nowhere Else to Go

Chapter 13   Not Afraid Anymore

Chapter 14   Under Construction

Chapter 15   Hope That Never Disappoints

Chapter 16   Don’t Stop Now

Chapter 17   The Battle Before Me

Chapter 18   Going North

Chapter 19   Reality Check

Chapter 20   Because of the Rock

Chapter 21   I Still Believe

Chapter 22   Seeing How

Chapter 23   What the Locusts Took

Chapter 24   Lessons from Hannah

Chapter 25   Carrying the Weight

Chapter 26   No Turning Back

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I want to thank my husband, Jason. I truly could not have done this without you. You have worked tirelessly alongside me through this process—from reading early drafts, giving feedback and suggestions, taking care of our children so I could sneak away to write, cheering me on, praying for me, supporting me unconditionally, and loving me through the emotional roller coaster that this project has been. Thank you for your deep knowledge and unrelenting integrity to God’s word, which came in incredibly handy time and time again over the course of writing this book. Thank you for your resolve to love and live for Jesus no matter what and for always encouraging me to do the same. I hope that all six of our children (those in heaven and those here with us on earth) know how blessed they are to have you as their dad. I am beyond grateful to share this life with you. Thank you and I love you!

I also have to thank my children here on earth—Natalyn Lori Grace, Mason Noah, and Caleb Thomas. Thank you for always putting a smile on my face after all the tears that were shed during the writing of this book. Thank you for letting me (as best you could) take the time needed to complete this work—by napping long! I hope that years from now when you are older, you will read this book and learn about the impact that Natalie, Noah, and your other sibling in heaven made on me and your dad. And most of all, I hope that you will learn about Jesus and strengthen your commitment to live for Him all the days of your life. Thank you for the physical representations of God’s grace that you are to me each day. Your mommy loves you!

To my dear Nonna, Donna Schutz, thank you for all the hours spent listening to me talk about this book, encouraging me, praying for me, and your willingness to help me. You got a sneak-peek look at several of these chapters, and your editorial suggestions were so helpful and appreciated. Above all that though, thank you for challenging me at an early age to grow in my relationship with Jesus. Apart from your persistent and unashamed nudges for me to read my Bible and spend quiet time with Jesus as a teenager, I’m not sure if my relationship with Him would be what it is today. And if that were the case, I’m not sure if this book would have ever come to be. Thank you for living your life so boldly and passionately for Jesus as it has taught me to do the same. I am so incredibly grateful for you as my grandmother, friend, and spiritual mentor.

I want to thank my mom, Lori Tunmer, for her role in this book coming to fulfillment. Your support to Jason and me following our losses has been absolutely essential and monumental for us—from coming to our house almost every day, bringing meals or cooking for us, reading the book Hinds’ Feet on High Places to us, listening to us, crying with us, and just simply being there for us. Your support following our greatest tragedies helped shape our grief process, and this book is truly a culmination of that grief process. Thank you for who you are—your kind, generous, and joyful spirit shines the love of Jesus everywhere you go.

I also want to give special thanks to the pastors at the Mission Church, particularly Pastor Linda Schrek. Jason and I are forever grateful for how you walked alongside us in the aftermath of our losses—from visiting us in the hospital, facilitating Natalie and Noah’s memorial service, praying for us, checking in on us, encouraging us, and being available to help us process what we were going through. You all have become our family, and I am truly grateful for how your support demonstrated God’s love and grace to us.

To the WestBow Press publishing team, thank you for all your hard work and assistance to me throughout this process! Thank you for being available, working with me, answering questions, getting things done, and making this whole project happen in a practical way. I am thankful to have had a group of professionals on my side who are dedicated to Christian publishing.

And a final thanks to my stepdad, Scott Tunmer—you saved the day during my last-minute grammar crisis. Thank you for teaching me all about grammar when I was younger and for continuing to teach me! It has certainly been instrumental throughout this writing process.

INTRODUCTION

Childhood Dreams

What do you want to be when you grow up? To a child, that question incites so many exciting thoughts of endless possibilities, hopeful ambitions, and bright tomorrows. It elicits the best-case thinking for life’s outlook. It provokes the idea that whatever we decide we want to be we can become.

That idea may be somewhat true to an extent. If I think back to one of my very first what I wanted to be, it was, amusingly, a dolphin trainer. But living in the Northeast made it pretty impractical to actually become a dolphin trainer. As you grow up a little bit too, your what you want to be typically grows in maturity along with you.

Eventually, this childhood dream evolved into the desire to become a marine biologist. This seemed like a much more sophisticated want for a maturing child and much more pragmatic. But—and this is a big but—I have always been terrified of sharks. So once I learned that marine biologists spent a lot of time out on the ocean on boats, marine biology was out.

And so on it went. I think probably for most people, these what we want to be when we grow up are simply transient ambitions of our childhoods that change along with us over the course of adolescence.

For me though, there has been one what I want to be that has never wavered, changed, or fizzled out over time: the desire to be a mom.

I was one of those girls who dreamed about getting married and having babies. It was a nonnegotiable. It trumped any and every aspiration, hope, or goal for my life.

I wanted to be a mom.

It seemed like a reasonable and achievable goal; after all, there are many women who get pregnant quickly or without even trying and go on to have a litter of kids with hardly any effort or heartache.

That is not my story though.

Shattered Dreams

I met the man who would become my husband, Jason, during my junior year at Southeastern University—a small Christian school in central Florida. We quickly discovered that we enjoyed spending time together and shared some things in common: we were both middle children, loved Jesus and the outdoors, played college sports, and had a strong desire to get married and start a family.

Jason and I were engaged after five months of dating and married seven months later at the ages of twenty-four and twenty-two respectively. Our wedding took place two days after my college graduation, and following our honeymoon, we moved back to my hometown in the Northeast to begin our married life.

About one month after that, we were excited to start trying to add to our family of two. But as years passed by and I still wasn’t getting pregnant, we realized that something must be wrong.

After seeing my gynecologist and a reproductive endocrinologist, we found out that