In 2002, when Missy found out she was expecting again, her world seemed to bloom overnight. The news filled her heart with a quiet, radiant joy—a joy that came not just from the miracle of life, but from the sense that her family’s story was still unfolding. She already had two sons whom she adored, boys who filled her home with laughter, scraped knees, and bedtime stories. Yet this pregnancy carried a new kind of anticipation, a tender whisper of something more—a daughter, perhaps, or simply another blessing to love.
For a few precious weeks, Missy lived wrapped in that dream. She pictured the nursery, the tiny hands she would hold, the life that would soon make their family of four a family of five. Friends celebrated with her. Jase smiled wider than usual. The future felt warm and full.
But joy, sometimes, can be heartbreak in disguise. Between eight and ten weeks into the pregnancy, that hope was shattered. Missy miscarried. The news hit like a storm she never saw coming. One day, she was planning names and nursery colors; the next, she was grappling with silence—the kind of silence that follows when something sacred slips away.
The miscarriage was devastating, not only for what was lost, but for the painful process that followed. Physically, her body endured what her heart could hardly comprehend. Emotionally, she felt hollowed out, caught between grief and disbelief. Missy later spoke of the anguish of knowing she had to undergo a procedure to remove what could have been their child—a reality no mother is ever prepared to face.
Doctors explained it was a tubal pregnancy, a rare and dangerous complication in which the embryo implants in the fallopian tube instead of the uterus. It was no one’s fault. There was nothing she could have done differently. But that knowledge brought little comfort. It still felt cruel, senseless—like a promise made and broken in the same breath.
In the quiet that followed, Missy and Jase leaned on each other more than ever. They prayed, they cried, and in time, they found strength in hope—the fragile, persistent kind that grows even in heartbreak’s shadow.
Not long after, hope blossomed again. Missy learned she was pregnant once more. Fear lingered in the background—grief always leaves its fingerprints—but so did faith. And this time, the baby growing inside her was a girl. They named her Mia.
But even that long-awaited joy came with its own ache. During the pregnancy, they discovered that Mia would be born with a congenital condition that would make her journey more difficult. The news was bittersweet—beautiful and heartbreaking all at once. Missy’s heart swelled with love for the daughter she had longed for, even as she braced herself for the battles that lay ahead.
When Mia finally arrived, Missy remembers feeling overwhelmed. The tiny baby she held in her arms was both a miracle and a challenge—a symbol of endurance, of faith tested and renewed. She worried about what the future would hold, about the pain and surgeries that awaited her daughter.
But Jase saw things differently. Where Missy saw hardship, he saw purpose. Where she saw uncertainty, he saw strength—Mia’s and theirs. And together, standing on the other side of loss and fear, they began again, their love for their children deepened by every storm they had survived.
