Hi friends! I hope everyone is having a great week.  Texas is having a major heat situation at the moment, and we are all just trying to survive the walk to our cars and not getting our bare legs stuck on the leather seats.  I saw this the other day, and I had to share.  So funny.  Today, I am thankful for air conditioning and swimming pools!

I wanted to talk today about something I learned over the past year.  It is a super easy way to make someone feel loved, and I am so sad to say that I have never been great at this one little thing.  I would say that I have tried, but I could always do better. So, I wanted to share this with all of you.  Acknowledging the hard dates.  I have also spoken with a handful of women over the last month or so that feel alone during these hard dates.  No one needs to do hard dates alone.  Am I right?

I am sure that each of you reading this today has at least one day per year that reminds you of something hard.  It may be the death of a family member, a failed infertility treatment, it could be anything.  For the longest time, I didn’t have a hard date.  I could name several horrible encounters at a salon where I left crying, the day that I got laid off from my job in my mid-twenties, or the day I started wearing WAY TOO MUCH make up in high school (which Reid refers to my “goth phase” when looking back at pictures). But, I never had an actual date.

My first bad date was September 29^th.  It was the day that we found out we lost our twin girls.  Randomly, Harlan was also beat up on the preschool playground by some 2-year-old little bully that day.  Bad day for the Beuclers.  So, September 29^th was the first hard date.  That was in 2009, and I am no longer sad each September 29^th.  Life goes on, but that was a day that was so hard.

As the years have passed, and the miscarriages have racked up, those dates have come and gone.  And, then last year, June 17^th became the date that will stay with me forever.  It will be my hard date.  The day I had sweet Sophie, and then promptly gave her sweet little body back to the doctor.  June 17^th this year was a hard date, but also one filled with peace.  I had so many friends and family members reach out to me telling me they loved me, they were praying for me, and that they cared.  Some were voicemails, some texts, and some mailed cards.  It was such an easy thing to do on their end, and it meant so much to me.

A friend and I were chatting earlier this summer about the loss of her child.  She had an eerily similar experience to me several years ago.  She has been a constant source of encouragement and peace throughout the last year, and I am so very thankful that God placed her in my path just months before we lost Sophie.  This dear friend of mine told me that the first anniversary was the hardest, and then it gets weird from there.  Some years, it is just a day, and she is able to move on.  Other years, it is a hard day, full of sadness and grief from what might have been.  When people reach out to her on that hard anniversary, it is so heart-warming.

I know that there are several of you out there living hard dates.  No one should do hard dates alone.  I was so grateful in how people treated Reid and me on and around June 17th.  I made it my mission to put all of my friend’s hard days on my calendar.  My calendar may look a little depressing once I get all of that done, but I know in turn that I am making someone smile. I challenge you guys to do the same.  Such an easy, quick text to send.  I promise that you will make someone’s day. And, for those of you that have the hard day . . . don’t do it alone.  Let those that you love you in.  Supporting and loving each other is the only way to do this life.

If you don’t have anyone praying for you during your hard date, please let me know and I will be happy to send up a prayer in honor of you. XO