on angels wings

We got Josie when she was 9 months old, placed with us through medical foster care. We knew she had Marshall-Smith Syndrome, but we had no idea the journey the Lord was about to take us on.

Each year, On Angels’ Wings presents the VIP (Very Important Photographer) Award to a select group of volunteer photographers who exemplify our mission and values through extraordinary dedication.

I want to talk about something else equally entangled with our mental health: grief. And more specifically, how we respond — or often, how we don’t quite know how to respond — when someone we care about is deep in the throes of it.

We hope that Evie lives a normal, full life, stays strong, and that—as her family—we never take a single thing for granted. We don’t sweat the small stuff anymore. Life is precious.

Everything changed at the time of his birth. Only then did we begin to understand the magnitude of his sickness and the challenges that were ahead. After he was born, his doctors could finally give us more information about the severity of his condition. Reality set in once we had some concrete facts.

I hope for happiness, health, love, and wellbeing. I hope life is fair to him. That he surrounds himself with people who see his worth and respect him. Friends who cherish him. I hope he dreams of all the possibilities and ways he can contribute to changing the world.

Learn the answer to “what is a congenital diaphragmatic hernia?” and how this condition impacts health from birth.

We had 10 weeks from the diagnosis to love Cecelia as much as we could. We sought an induction the day before her due date, as I couldn’t feel her kicking and moving as much as before. It was really scary. She stayed with us though labor, her heartbeat on the monitor. We had a…

I hope that we continue to move on and heal from losing our precious Elizabeth. We want to be a light to others that have helped us during our most difficult times, and we hope to help others that will face hard times in the future. We want to keep her memory alive and continue…

Testing after she was born revealed that Aurora had a gap between her valve and heart, and that she had Trisomy 18.