I’m Jenny Burghardt. Here’s how I’m living deeply. 

“There’s a copy of a children’s book sitting in a memory care unit right now -placed there almost by accident- that made a CNA stop in her tracks. She’d never told anyone at work that she had lost a two-year-old. But she saw the book, and the words came. She spoke her child’s name out loud, maybe for the first time in a long time. And somehow, in the middle of a hard day in a hard place, the gospel got spoken into her story. I never could have planned that. But I think God did. It all started before my son Jones was even born. If you know our family’s story, you know our first daughter, Ruthie, was stillborn- and not long after, I became pregnant with Jones. Grieving and carrying a pregnancy at the same time was a rollercoaster of emotions, but I knew I wanted to carry Ruthie’s memory well with this next child, and I knew that I never wanted there to be a day when I would have to sit Jones down and tell him: ‘Oh, by the way, you had a sister.’ I wanted him to just always know. So I looked for resources -something to help explain to a child that a sibling had passed- and I really couldn’t find anything. So I wrote something myself. I cut the words out and pasted them right into a children’s book we already had, one with little bears in it. That homemade book traveled with us for years. But about a year ago, I was walking with another mom who had lost a child and had then gone on to have another baby, and I wanted to give her something. I sent her my words, but it didn’t quite feel like enough. I wished I had more to give her. Around that same time, I was listening to a podcast and the host asked a question that stopped me in my tracks: ‘What is your gift to the world that only you can do?’ And I thought, ‘Wow. This is it. Publishing this book feels like something I know could be used for the Lord in other people’s lives, and I know no one else can really do this.’ So I said yes.’

Saying yes to publishing the book, which I ended up calling More Love to Pour Out, meant saying yes to being seen- and that was the hard part. Yes, there was a financial cost and a cost of time. But emotionally? I didn’t realize how scary it would be to really put myself and my words out there. I found an amazing illustrator through a freelance website -a man in the middle of war-torn Ukraine- and between YouTube tutorials and the design tool Canva, I was able to put the whole thing together and publish it through Amazon. That process, honestly, turned out to be the simpler part. The harder part was the voice in my head saying: ‘Maybe I don’t have to tell anybody. What if people in my own community read it and think it’s stupid?’ Growing up in the South, you want to be humble about everything, and here I am saying, ‘Buy my book.’ That felt so uncomfortable to me. The Lord really had to work in me to squash that fear, that pride, that concern over what people would think. But he reminded me: it’s his story. I just get to be a mouthpiece for it. And the book itself? It’s really for the moms. It’s a children’s book, yes- but when I picture my main audience, I picture the mom who is still grieving, still wrestling, and this being a chance for her to hear: ‘The Lord is still with you. There is hope. This is not the end of the story. Love is bigger than loss.’ Because that’s what I know to be true. In the simplest children’s language, I get to tell the gospel story- that we’ll see our babies again because Jesus loves us and covered our sins and made a way for it all to be made right in the end. That’s the comfort I’ve clung to. That’s what I wanted to put in someone else’s hands. When I held the first hard copy, my husband Matt and our kids Jones and Poppy gathered around. The kids had watched me work on it, looked at the illustrations as they came in, talked it all through with me. Jones wrote a little note inside the front cover to Ruthie. So did Poppy. It was something all of us had made together.

Jones is eight now. Poppy is five. And Ruthie- she would be nine and a half. The way our kids understand her is one of the sweetest things. It’s just part of our family’s story, our reality. For the most part it’s less sad than it is just… fact. We all know we’ll get to see her again and we dream of what it’ll be like. When Poppy was little, she would pray every night and thank God for her ‘big baby sister’- because she knew Ruthie was only ever a baby, but she’s also her big sister. Both kids understand to the extent that they can, but without the grief that Matt and I experienced. And I think Ruthie’s life has been so instrumental for them, giving them a little bit of a deeper sense of compassion and a little bit deeper understanding of eternity. Those are things I wouldn’t have been able to teach them if it hadn’t been for her. We still have pictures of Ruthie in our home. I wear a necklace with her thumbprint. And I can mostly talk of her with a smile now- it’s not that sharp pain that once existed. Mostly it’s thankfulness- that we get to tell her story, that she changed our lives for the better. I would still change it if I could, of course. I would love for her to still be living. But when I picture seeing her again, my heart swells. Visions of a running hug- meeting her again as a baby to whatever age she might actually be in eternity. A huge embrace. Twirling and laughing. More Love to Pour Out is about the certainty of that joy.

And the book has ended up in places I never imagined. My dad is my number one fan. He ordered a bunch of copies and basically just gave them out to all his friends for Christmas. And that’s actually how it found its way into a memory care unit- because my mom moved into one just this past January. It’s been a hard season. Memory loss is its own kind of grief, and we’re walking through it together, as a family. But we had the book in Mom’s room, and one of the CNAs came in and saw it sitting there. She picked it up. And then she started talking. She had lost a two-year-old years ago. I could have known her for years and it might never have come up in conversation. But the book was there, and it gave her something to point to, something to hold- and she spoke the name of the child she lost out loud. We got to talk about her loss. One of the hospice nurses also revealed that she had grieved the loss of a child. So I was able to give the book to her as well, and to speak the gospel into her story. There’s something about holding a physical object like a book in your hands- it sometimes opens a door that words alone can’t. A tangible thing can speak to an invisible reality. More Love to Pour Out is a physical reminder of Ruthie, yes- but also of the hope we have in Jesus, and the unimaginable, extravagant love that He pours out that is just as real, even when you can’t see it. A book is something a family can keep. Personalize. Write in. There’s a page inside that says ‘This book belongs to____, in loving memory of ____’- and I want people to put a picture in it, change the pronouns, make the story theirs. Because that’s exactly what it is. Yours. And your family’s. And God’s.” 

NOTE: If you’d like a copy of Jenny Burghardt’s book More Love to Pour Out: A Redemptive Story of Loss and Meaning for Siblings, you can find it available for purchase on Amazon or at Lila and Co.