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Dear Men,

Losing a child sucks. As a man who lost a child, nobody told me that it was okay for me to grieve. Nobody taught me how to grieve...and honestly, as a man, I probably wouldn’t have listened to them anyway. My wife and I have twin sons born in 2009, and we were expecting our 3rd child to arrive in early 2016. I was hoping for a little girl, a beautiful daughter who would always know her daddy loved her to the moon and back. As the summer of 2015 was coming to an end however, we lost our unborn baby. It was devastating.

In the immediate aftermath of that loss, my wife and I had very few safe spaces. Both the people in our church and the people we knew outside of our church were less than helpful. I swear, if one more person had said something like, “Well at least you still have two kids” or “Don’t worry, God must have a plan” I was going to flip out on them. As a man, I took it as my job to protect my wife. I could clearly see that the people around us in this world were not a safe space for my wife to share her thoughts, and because of that I saw my wife avoid any conversation that could possibly have been linked to our loss or to kids in any type of way. I watched my wife protect herself by choosing to be very selective with who and what she talked about. As my wife’s knight in shining armor, I did what any man would want to do, and I tried to shield her from potential further harm.

But remember, nobody had yet told me it was okay for ME to grieve. We had waded out into deep waters that were unfamiliar to me. I decided that the best thing to do was to take my wife’s avoidance of those conversations that had anything to do with kids or loss, and fully embrace the avoidance. It seemed obvious she didn’t want to talk about it with others, so I just pretended I was strong and unbothered by our loss. Even though our baby hadn’t been born yet, that didn’t mean we hadn’t given a part of our heart to him or her already. We still loved our baby even though we never had a chance to see his or her face. But that stuff didn’t seem to matter much anymore. I was on a mission to protect my wife from having to talk about it, and to demonstrate strength for my family to see. In my mind I was showing my family that following my lead would take us to a better day.

Until one day. While watching a show on TV and talking with each other one evening, my wife asked, “Aren’t you hurting at all?” I remember being confused by that, and asked what she was referring to. Her next statement to me was so clear, so raw. She said, “I’m wondering if I’m crazy. You seem to be unaffected by losing our baby and doing just fine, and I’m over here wanting to cry. I can’t cry though, because it looks like you’re just fine. Am I the crazy one because I’m still upset that we lost our baby?”

It cut to my heart in an instant, and everything became clear in that moment. I explained to my wife that I was still very much upset about our loss, but because I was trying to be strong for her, I didn’t bring it up at all. It turns out, all my wife had been wanting was to know that she wasn’t alone in the pain she was feeling. She wanted to know that I, the person she had welcomed into the deepest spaces of her heart, was on the same page as she was. Oh boy, what surge of power we experienced in that moment of realization. My wife realized that she was not alone...and I realized that it was okay to let people know that I was grieving. We held each other and cried together. Somehow by sharing the pain we each felt, our pain instantly became more manageable.

By looking back on the events we endured, I learned a couple things about being a man who wants to be strong for his significant other and for his family. I learned that my idea of being strong wasn’t necessarily the same show of strength that my family was needing. My family needed me to carve out a safe space where they would be able to grieve. The strength my family needed was for me to lead the way with sharing the emotions I was experiencing. Once I shared that I too was hurting, that communicated to my wife that it was safe for her to also share her pain.

If I’m being honest, there was probably a part of me all along that was afraid of being honest with the emotions I felt after our family’s loss. Isn’t tackling that which scares you and overcoming it a clear sign of being strong? I believe it is. So by starting to be honest with the emotions I was feeling, not only was I starting to show how strong I was, but I was also being a good leader for my family by creating the safe spaces where their needs could be met.

After looking back on my story and using those real life experiences to help shape my views of manly strength, I now reject the world’s views towards manliness that fall short of Christlikeness. There’s nothing wrong with having incredible physical strength or hanging with the guys or participating in those activities that commonly catch the attention of men. But what did Jesus do? He laid his life down for the benefit of others, so that they may find a path that leads to life.

How can we possibly be more manly than Jesus? Listen, that man hiked everywhere he went with nothing more than a leather strap of a sandal on his feet, up and down mountainous terrain all over, never once had a nice memory foam mattress to sleep on, had everyone turn their back on him in betrayal, faced unpleasant criticism head on, and literally took the weight of the world’s sin upon his shoulders as he gave himself up on the cross. Then that man did exactly what he said he would do, and defeated death and darkness once and for all by rising again three days after his death.

I can’t do what Jesus did, and neither can you...so it’s a good thing that that isn’t what’s being asked of us as men. But we can be like Jesus, and give ourselves up for others. We can face the very things that scare us (even if we don’t want to admit it), and lean into the things that make us uncomfortable. That’s sometimes the greatest show of strength and manliness we can possibly embrace, especially when that’s exactly what our families need from us.

Fellow men, thank you for listening to my story. Thank you for letting me share my strengths and weaknesses, my triumphs and my failures. Read what a man named Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 about how he viewed his weaknesses and strengths. In verse 9, Paul shares that the Lord once said to him, “my power is made perfect in weakness.”

We can do this, men. We can grieve, and we can grieve well. We can be honest about our emotions, and we can create safe spaces for others to do the same. We can be strong, and we can find strength in our weaknesses. Lean in to the Lord. Lean in to the Christ-centered people in your life. The Lord being our helper, we are here for you brother.

Grace and peace, Nathan S.