I remember I had a sorority sister, a good girlfriend in college, who lived in Birmingham, about an hour away from Tuscaloosa. I would go home with her on the weekends, and she was one of four children.

That house was just so full of energy and life and happiness, and I just loved the chaos of it. I was pretty set in my mind at that time that I wanted four children.

So fast forward, Jared and I got married, and then we had our first son, Battle. When Battle was five months old, we found out I was pregnant with our second son, Hayes. So they were just 15 months apart, and life was so busy with two boys so close together.

Then I begged and pleaded my way for a third child, and we had our third son, Gray.

And we were done. We were good to go. We had the beginnings of a basketball team, and we were calling it a day.

My mom and I had planned an outing on June 8th. We were going to take the boys to the zoo, and I was happy to go because I had another adult to go with me that I could chat with, but also it was just a fun day for my boys.

So we went to the zoo, and I remember Hayes, our second son, who sometimes we called Grumpy Goo. He just sometimes had a grumpy demeanor.

He held my hand, and I vividly remember walking through the kangaroo section at the Nashville Zoo, which is a little pathway where you can walk through and stay on the path, but if the kangaroos come up to you, you can be close to them and potentially even pet them.

I remember holding his hand, and he swung it back and forth, and he looked at me and was like, “Mommy, this is so much fun.”

He was seven, almost eight years old, and it was just one of those moments of joy that sticks out in your memory.

The boys all got along that day, which is another miracle upon miracles.

I was wanting to get snacks, and I had actually never been in an Aldi before. So it was just one of those moments where I was like, “Okay, boys, we’re going to go explore.”

It was close to Hayes’ birthday, just eight days before he was going to turn eight.

When we were in Aldi, he found a baseball slip-and-slide. I am that mom who, when my kids want things, I pretty easily say no. I don’t always or often give in.

But that one day, he said, “Mommy, can I have this?”

And in that moment, I just was like, “You know what? Yeah, you can. Let’s take it up there and see how much it is. Yeah, you can have it.”

So we put that in our cart, and we got a few other snacks, and we went up to the checkout line.

I remember that baseball diamond slip-and-slide was only $12.99, and it was the best $12.99 that I ever spent.

So we checked out, and we got our snacks. We got in the car, and Hayes had that slip-and-slide baseball diamond right beside him.

We came to a stop at a traffic light, and unfortunately, a distracted driver, speeding, hit the back of my van.

And when I turned around and came to, I looked in the back, and Hayes had passed away.

An ambulance came, and there were so many angels at the site of the accident trying to resuscitate Hayes and taking care of Battle and myself, calling my husband, Jared.

One ambulance took Hayes to the hospital, and the other ambulance took Battle and myself to the hospital.

They tried so hard to bring Hayes back, but he was gone.

Once I was cleared at the adult hospital and transferred over to the Children’s Hospital, where my kids and, come to find out, my husband and my family and a thousand friends were there waiting, my husband Jared took me into a conference room and sat me down.

He said, “I love you so much. Our children, we love God, we’re going to get through this. But Hayes died.”

As we left that conference room and went into the room where our other two children were, Battle, and then my mom had brought Gray to the hospital, our pastor was there, our children’s pastor, so many of our neighbors and friends and church and family and community members.

They had heard about the accident because bad news travels fast, and they were there that evening.

They were there in the hours, the minutes, days, the months, the years to come.

Knowing how much support we got is what made so much sense to me about starting Faithfully Restored.

It is such an amazing bond to find somebody else who has been through a similar situation.

What’s really neat and special is that the first time I met Jamie, she was pregnant with her third child, Annie, who is their child that they had after William passed.

Not long after Hayes passed, I asked my husband Jared if he would be open to having another child. He agreed, and he said yes.

And 17 months to the day and time that Hayes went to heaven, our son Hyde was born, my fourth child.

So I got what I wanted. God answered that desire. We have four children. We are so blessed.

And I just want to say that six years after Hayes died, I don’t want this to seem crass or insensitive, but remember that he passed.

I know empathy. I know the joy that comes from living every day. I know happiness. I know thankfulness. I know blessings. I know the love of Christ deeper and more today than I ever would have if it was my original three boys still here with me.

Do I wish that it could have been a different way for me to learn those beautiful lessons? Of course.

Do I wish Hayes was still here? Of course.

But the opportunity to share my story with others and to share the love of God, and just that God is with us always, that God is good always, and that there are just bigger blessings in our life through Him, would not have come about without the passing of Hayes.

Jared and I so often talk about the fact that we have deeper faith, better friendships, a better marriage because of Hayes’ passing.

I think one of my worst fears is people not remembering Hayes and remembering that I have four sons.

So when people ask me how many sons I have, it’s always four.

I had Hayes for almost eight years, and I’ll always have four sons.

I don’t want people to forget him because his life was important and meaningful, and he was so loved.

And so I’m so appreciative of the friends who every year on his birthday put balloons on our mailbox for him or send us a note of acknowledgment saying what a beautiful eight years, or close to eight years, that he spent on this earth and how loved he was.

And I think at the root of it, all of human life, we want to be loved and we want to be seen.

That’s what we’re doing at Faithfully Restored.

We want these women to know that they are loved and that they’re seen, that their story is heard, and that we hurt with them, and that we know that life is hard.

And we want to show that while we know this, that God’s love for them is so big, that God’s love for me is so big, and it knows no bounds.