When Faith Grows Muscle Memory: The Difference Between My Two Sons
- Tenn-Lai Frame
- May 26
- 4 min read
I spent the first pregnancy holding my breath.
Every ultrasound revealed something new to worry about. Another possible diagnosis?! Another specialist appointment?! Another reason to lie awake at three in the morning, running through worst-case scenarios and pleading with God for answers He wasn’t giving me yet. My son was born, and we thought the hard part was over. But then came more tests, more waiting rooms, more doctors using words like “concerning” and “monitor closely.” Eventually, surgery. If you want to hear the full story of his journey from pregnancy through surgery and his miraculous healing, I actually documented it on my YouTube page. You can watch it all unfold in real time. I’ll link it at the end of this post.
What the YouTube videos don’t show is what came after. The season that broke me in a completely different way.
Two miscarriages. Both at twelve weeks. Both exactly three months apart, like my body was on some cruel timer I couldn’t reset. The first one gutted me. The second one made me question everything I thought I knew about God’s goodness. I was reading my Bible. I was praying. I was doing all the things you’re supposed to do when your world is falling apart. But here’s what no one tells you about grief: sometimes the generic comfort doesn’t reach the specific ache.
I looked for devotionals that understood what it felt like to lose a baby at twelve weeks, right when you’ve just started to exhale and believe this one would make it. I found beautiful words written for women walking through loss, but they felt like they were written for someone else’s pain. They didn’t know about the ultrasound pictures I’d hidden in my nightstand drawer. They didn’t know about the nursery I’d mentally decorated twice and dismantled twice. They didn’t know that I was angry at God and desperately clinging to Him at the same time, and I had no idea how to hold both of those things in the same prayer.
So I started writing my own. Not for anyone else. Just for me. I would open my Bible with hands that were still shaking and search for something that spoke to where I actually was, not where I wished I could be. Then I’d write it down. The verse. The raw prayer. The question I was afraid to ask out loud. The tiny seed of hope I was scared to water because what if it died too.
I didn’t know it then, but the words I wrote in my darkest moments were building something in me. My faith was learning muscle memory. It was practicing how to hold on when there were no answers, how to trust when the outcome was still unknown, how to keep showing up to Scripture even when it hurt to read it.
And then God gave us another pregnancy.
This time, there was a possible issue with our son’s brain. This time, I went into labour and started bleeding heavily with no clear source. The medical team couldn’t figure out where it was coming from at first. I had to stay in one specific position to keep his heart rate stable, and even then, we didn’t know if the umbilical cord was detaching as he moved down or what was happening inside my body that we couldn’t see. All I knew was that I had to hold still, keep breathing, and trust God with an outcome I had zero control over.
Here’s the thing that still takes my breath away when I think about it:
I wasn’t falling apart.
During the miscarriages, my faith felt like it was barely hanging on by a thread. But during this delivery, with blood I couldn’t explain and a possible brain issue hanging over everything and no time to spiral or search for comfort, my faith held steady. I knew God was with me. I knew He was in control even when nothing around me felt controlled. I trusted Him in the chaos in a way I physically could not during those losses.
The crisis was just as scary. Maybe scarier. But I was different.
Once he was born, the bleeding stopped. Everything was fine. And as I held my second son in my arms, I realized what had changed between the miscarriages and this moment. It wasn’t that God had given me an easier road. It was those personalized devotionals I’d written during my breaking point that had actually rewired how I walked through crisis. My faith had taught me to hold on when I didn’t understand. It had learned how to stay anchored when the storm hit without warning.
That’s when I knew. If writing those words for myself in my lowest moments had built my faith strong enough to hold steady during an emergency delivery, then maybe other women needed the same thing. Maybe the very tool that saved me during the miscarriages could be the thing that carries someone else through their own unthinkable season.
This is why I create personalized devotionals for women now.
Not generic comfort. Not one-size-fits-all prayers. I write devotionals that know your specific ache, that meet you in your exact crisis, that help your faith practice holding on before the next storm comes. Because I lived the difference between faith that’s scrambling for something to grab onto and faith that’s already got muscle memory.
I’m not saying personalized devotionals will make your pain disappear or guarantee the outcome you’re praying for. I’m saying they build something in you that generic words can’t. They teach your faith how to hold on when you can’t see what’s coming. They give you a place to bring your realest, rawest prayers and find Scripture that actually speaks to them.
The woman who couldn’t find the right words during her miscarriages is now the woman who writes them for others. The breaking point became the building point. And if you’re in a season where the comfort you’re finding doesn’t quite reach the specific place you’re hurting, I want you to know: there’s something more personal waiting for you. Something that knows your name, your loss, your fear, your question. Something that will help your faith grow strong enough to hold you when the next unknown comes.
Because that’s what personalized devotionals did for me. And that’s exactly what I want them to do for you.
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