Photo credit: antonychammond via Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC-SA

I can’t shake this fact. My cousin and his wife lost a newborn baby recently. Mere weeks before the actual due date. Their daughter was scheduled to join her three older brothers later this summer. A baby they held for only minutes.

That sucks. Living miles and miles away, I don’t know what to say. I have nothing wise to offer. A recitation of my doctrinal beliefs doesn’t touch this couple’s wounded heart.

There is an unfortunate truth. The best way to empathize with a person going through something is having gone through it yourself.

I have seen people offer condolences on their Facebook wall. By far, the most heartfelt, healing posts have been from those who have been there.

Where have you been? None of us want to go through the ugliness of life to emerge the comforter. Yet that’s often the way of things.

I did go through something. I lost my father when he was 55-years-old. Tragically. He went too soon and the circumstances surrounding his death were questionable.

But I don’t want to write about that. Personal family history. Truths that impact more than just me.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. – Ernest Hemingway

Click here to keep reading my piece at Her View From Home about what grieving over the loss of my dad taught me.