Seed and Soil started because my husband bought me a mustard seed necklace, a few years before my son died. After I lost my baby boy I wore that necklace, if only as a symbol that my heart, broken and angry, still held a tiny seed of faith.
18 weeks pregnant with our fourth child, we arrived at the ultrasound facility barely able to contain our excitement, the day was finally here to find out if the newest member of our family was a girl or boy. Because we were planning a home birth this was not a medical ultrasound but a private pay gender reveal. We waited in the lobby with our seven, five, and four year old until they called us back to a comfy room with a leather couch and a reclining table for me. All smiles and impatience as the tech put jelly on my belly, moving the monitor back and forth in search of the perfect view of our little one. She searched and searched and I knew something was wrong. After some time she turned to me and said that she couldn’t find a heartbeat and that I should go to a hospital for a medical ultrasound.
All I wanted to get out of that office where excited parents were leaving with beaming faces before I burst into tears.
The months and even years that followed made me question why God would give us the baby we asked for and then take him away before we would ever know him. It seemed sadistic.
Aren’t good fathers supposed to give their children good gifts, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” Matthew 7:9-11?”
How can you trust a divine being who allows your greatest fear to come true. How could I ask God to protect my three littles ones that were still with me? What did good mean or protection mean? I didn’t trust anymore, how could I? After that I felt broken, like the world was broken. Suddenly the sky and trees and flowers all felt two dimensional, fake, like looking at a book. I tried to pray, I tried to trust but my heart had been shattered.
We will each have our own dark night(s) of the soul and the answers needed to come through are as different as we are from one another. In losing my son I lost the naive belief in the system of my community. If I was good and godly then I would be blessed. I have come to learn that God is not a system and knowing the Divine requires stepping out into the great unknown, where there is only the I am that I am. This knowing, often only learned through the teacher of pain, is the greatest gift, the deepest joy, ultimate peace. And, I will see my son again, someday not too far off.
This is the knowing and the heart behind Seed and Soil. A tiny jewelry business with the big mission to reach out a hand and help you towards healing and living undivided “For Your Growth.”
