Dayna and Matt, two high school sweethearts from Ann Arbor, Michigan, welcomed the birth of baby Luella in October 2015. A few weeks ago, Dayna posted a photo on her Facebook page, never thinking it would go massively viral in mere days. The Facebook photo shows Dayna cuddling up to Luella inside her crib, comforting her baby while she cried and screamed. “My husband came home to this, and I am re-posting because this captures the essence of my heart,” Dayna wrote. “There I was in the heat of this exhausting, beautiful thing we call parenthood, and I remembered a promise I made to her.”
The photo is accompanied by Dayna’s powerful story. She and Matt went to a worship conference once, and it was one of the first times they’d ever left Luella. While at the concert, a missionary shared his story on stage and it has stuck with Dayna ever since.
The missionary went to an orphanage in Uganda. In the nursery, there were more than 100 filled cribs with babies — but something immediately struck him as odd. The babies were completely silent. 100 living, breathing babies and there wasn’t a cry. There wasn’t a peep. All he could hear was silence. So, the missionary turned to his host and asked her why the nursery was so quiet.
The host’s response is something that shocked Dayna to the core, and the reason she climbed into Luella’s crib that day…
“This was from several weeks back, yes, I climbed in the crib in hopes to soothe my screaming, teething, blushed faced, and tear-soaked little girl,” Dayna wrote on Facebook.
My husband came home to this, and I am re-posting because this captures the essence of my heart, and my “why…” There I was in the heat of this exhausting, beautiful thing we call parenthood, and I remembered a promise I made to her.”
“One of the first times Matt and I left Luella, was to a worship concert. At that conference, a missionary shared his story, and it shook me to the core.
A moment that would forever be burned in my fragile, hormone raging, new mommy heart that had already become 100xs more fragile after meeting her.”
“That missionary was in an orphanage in Uganda, and he has been in many before, but this one was different. He walked into a nursery with over 100 filled cribs with babes. He listened in amazement and wonder as the only sound he could hear was silence. A sound that is beyond rare in ANY nursery, let alone a nursery where over 100 new babes laid. He turned to his host and asked her why the nursery was silent. Then, her response to him is something I will never, ever forget. EVER.
This was my ‘why’ moment.”
“She looked at him and said, ‘After about a week of them being here, and crying out for countless hours, they eventually stop when they realize no one is coming for them…’
…They stop crying when they realize no one is coming for them. Not in 10 minutes, not in 4 hours, and maybe, perhaps, not ever…
“Broke.
I broke. I literally could have picked up pieces of my heart scattered about the auditorium floor. But instead, it stirred in me a longing, a hunger… A promise in my spirit.
We came home, and that night as Luella rested her tiny little 10lb body against mine and we rocked, I made a promise to her. A promise that I would always come to her.
Always.”
“At 2:00 am when pitiful desperate squeals come through a baby monitor, I will come to her.
Her first hurt, her first heartbreak, we will come to her. We will be there to hold her, to let her feel, to make decisions on her own, and we will be there. We will show her through our tears and frustrations at times, that it is okay to cry, and it’s ok to feel.
That we will always be a safe place, and we will always come to her.”
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