October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month—a time to pause, remember, and give voice to the heartbreak that too often goes unspoken. For every mother who has carried love and loss in the same breath, this month is a gentle reminder that you are not alone. Together we create space for healing, share stories of strength and honor the precious babies who left footprints on our hearts.
I’ve walked through seasons where everything felt uncertain: when the job I depended on might go away, when the bills didn’t make sense and when the future I imagined slipped through my hands. But nothing compared to the heartbreak of losing our twins when I was 20 weeks pregnant.
That kind of loss changes everything. It shakes your faith, your identity and your sense of what’s safe.
Suddenly, “trust God” doesn’t feel simple anymore. And yet, in that pain when I had no words, no plans and no strength, God kept whispering the same quiet invitation: “Abide in Me. I love you.”
In the beginning, I didn’t want to abide—I wanted answers. I wanted healing. I wanted to wake up and find that none of it was real. But God didn’t offer explanations. He offered presence. John 15:4 became a verse I clung to even when I didn’t understand it: “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.”
Abiding, I learned, isn’t about pretending the pain doesn’t exist. It’s about choosing to stay connected to Jesus in the middle of it. When I felt like breaking, He held me. When I couldn’t pray, He still listened. When I doubted, He didn’t walk away. There were days when abiding looked nothing like peace. It looked like tears on the kitchen floor or long drives with worship music playing softly because silence felt too heavy. It looked like reading one verse—sometimes the same one—over and over again just to remind my heart that God was still there. It looked like letting people show up for me even when I didn’t have words.
And slowly, something shifted. I realized abiding wasn’t about feeling strong. It was about staying close, even when I was broken.
Jeremiah 17:7–8 says, “Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.” I didn’t feel strong, but my roots were growing deeper. Loss has a way of stripping away what’s shallow. And in that emptiness, I found a quiet steadiness—not because the pain was gone, but because Jesus was still there. He didn’t rush me out of the grief. He sat in it with me.
Losing those two babies changed me forever. It taught me that faith isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about holding on when there aren’t any. Through every unknown—job loss, fear, grief—God has been faithful to meet me there. Abiding hasn’t taken away the ache, but it has brought peace where I least expected it. If you’re walking through your own season of uncertainty or loss, please know this: you don’t have to be okay to stay close to Jesus. He holds you—even when you can’t hold yourself.
Keep showing up. Keep trusting. Keep abiding. The vine still holds.
Susan Veenema and her husband, Jeremy, love exploring Chester County with their two older biological daughters and three adopted children. Susan has been in education for almost 20 years supporting children with disabilities and their families. She currently works at the Department of Education. One of her greatest joys is leading Thursday night women's Bible study and her couples community group. People are her passion. She loves to read, write and study everything from history to social sciences to the early church. You'll always find her trusty German Shorthaired Pointer by her side.