She sat on the driveway, asphalt cold and rough under her fingers, watching the sun come up. What happens after the unthinkable happens? The sun comes up. Again and again and again. Stillbirth is a numbing reality for thousands of families each year, and when Andrea L. Lingle’s fourth child stopped moving one October day, she found herself living through just such a reality. Grief is a thoroughgoing despoiler. Nothing, from faith to family, is untouched by the immensity of grief. This is the story of a mother’s journey into stillbirth, into grief, into a reluctant sunrise.

Interviews:

Embodied: Making Sense of Grief and Loss After Stillbirth from The State of Things on NPR

From the Preface:

I wrote this book because I wanted to: I wanted to see if I could, I wanted to share what I see, I wanted to spark questions, and, most of all, I wanted to do so as a lay person. 

This book was written every afternoon for a year during naptime. It was written in gardens and my imagination. It was written, one moment at a time, and that is the way faith is for me. I will be sitting, exactly where my planner says I should be trying to parse out Important Ideas, and suddenly tiny hand prints on the walls of the church will turn my head around. There! There is God. The church is all aged granite, serious and profound, and there on one of the columns are two twin handprints, thumbs almost touching, perfect in their impertinence—a reminder that incarnation is sweaty, dirty, and invasive.

Welcome to the Spirited Words Blog

A Lay-Theologian, Mommy-blogger's collection of words. 

You're here. You know who you are, but who am I? Who is this banger of pots and slosher of laundry soap. Who is this piler of words and hoarder of metaphors? 

Not even I know that, but here's something I wrote that made me smile.