It is hard enough to lose a child, harder yet when you doubt the existence of that little one.

For some of us during this month of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness, we are missing the child that we fought to convince ourselves was there.

We are the moms with no ultrasound photo tucked into a journal, no sound of a whirring heartbeat etched into our memory, no doctor’s record to validate a child the world will never know.

For so long I was afraid to voice my question. Was that little one really there? If I and God are the only ones who can know the answer, is that enough?

Despite my predictable, clock-like body being ten days late, my question haunted me. Despite the faint lines, growing ever fainter with each test I took, I questioned. Despite the heavy bleeding that followed, and the aching, hollow, excruciating pain in my abdomen, I doubted.

I relived that aching pain in my mind, only to convince myself that it happened. That my child happened.

It’s a terribly difficult thing, for a grieving mother to sort out her thoughts. Mine were many, yet hollow. Wanting. Unsure. Frantic. And resurfacing throughout them was my question. The question of my child’s existence, that he or she was still somewhere. That my baby was not an idea, but a child now held in the arms of Jesus.

Each time I would place pen to paper to write about my child, I would ask myself if this was a tale of fiction. But I kept writing. And somehow, the words gave way to belief, to assurance.

For so long, I shut my doubts into a dark, lonely room, until those doubts echoed loud enough between those walls, and convinced me that there are other moms out there like me. There are other moms who had to, in the midst of grief, convince themselves that their grief was real, that their baby was real.

To those moms, I would offer the words that I told myself time and time and time again, the words that I wrote on paper until my spirit was convinced:

If only you and God know, it is enough.

The Author of life counts all life the same, no matter how short it is cut.

It’s ok to relive the details, to play them out in your mind until you’re convinced.

Your grief is not fabricated.

God knows your uncertainties, your insecurities, your questions. And He holds you.

It’s alright to have doubts. But don’t doubt God’s goodness, or the truth He tucks into your heart.

Perhaps it is through words like these that we come to know the child we will never hold this side of Heaven. It’s how I came to know my little one. The one who rests today in the arms of Jesus. The one I remember this month, and every month.

The one who one day, I will hold and know, real and true and near.