If You Invite the Right People, They’ll Show Up

What a baby shower taught me about grief, family, and finding my people.

A few days ago, I was standing in the middle of a baby shower—balloons floating, tiny gifts wrapped in soft pastels, laughter echoing off the walls—and out of nowhere, I felt that familiar tightness in my chest. The kind that sneaks up quietly when you're surrounded by joy, but your heart still remembers loss.

And I said, maybe without thinking it all the way through, "I don't think I want to have a baby shower."

Not because I don't want to celebrate the miracle that we are praying into existence.
Not because I don't believe in the goodness of this gift.
But because… I'm scared.

Scared that no one would come.

And I don’t mean strangers or acquaintances—I mean the people I expected to show up last time. The ones I called when my world shattered. The ones I messaged when the silence was too loud. And yet, after we lost Walker, their silence echoed louder than my grief. Calls were ignored. Messages left unread. “I just didn’t know what to say,” they later told me. “I didn’t feel like talking.”

So I stopped reaching out.
I started shrinking back.
And somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that if they couldn’t show up for our sorrow, they wouldn’t show up for our joy either.

But one statement had me absolutely reeling.
“If you invite the right people, they’ll show up.”

And it’s the truth.

After losing our son, I learned a lesson I wish I never had to learn:
Sometimes, the people you expect to catch you… don’t.
And sometimes, the people who barely know your pain will carry you anyway.

I spent so long trying to lean on the wrong people—people who were supposed to show up because of blood or last names. But healing has a way of revealing who’s really there. And it turns out, the family God sends isn’t always the family you were born into.

So no, I’m not afraid of being the center of attention. I’m afraid of being surrounded by emptiness when I need love the most.
But this time—if and when God answers this prayer for life—I’ll invite the right people.
The ones who prayed for us when we couldn’t find the words.
The ones who cried with us even from a distance.
The ones who included us in their own journeys.
The ones who show up—in grief, in joy, and in the everyday in-between.

Because those people?
They’ll come.
And that will be worth celebrating.