Sufficient Grace Ministries transitions to new home

DESHLER — A Henry County organization providing support and resources for families enduring pregnancy and infant loss has made the move to a new location. Sufficient Grace Ministries (SGM) will still call the village of Deshler home, but the nonprofit was recently gifted a church at 140 West Maple Street. "Previously we were in a house in town, and we filled it quite to the brim," said Kelly Gerken, who is the executive director and founder of Sufficient Grace Ministries, the international center for perinatal and neonatal hospice and bereavement services. Over the past several weeks, staff has been busy painting, organizing and moving into the new headquarters. An open house will be held from 3-6:30 p.m. Tuesday. "The church that owned it previously is still meeting. They're a very small congregation, and they're still meeting there on Sundays," she said. Gerken said it's nice to be able to spread out spacewise. In addition to offices, the building has a large, bright event space with a full kitchen, a shipping area and a quiet place for support group meetings or private prayer. Supplies are kept in the Dreams of You room. "We call it 'Dreams of You' because that's what a parent loses when they go through the loss of a child is that baby but also the dreams they had for them," she explained. "When you walk through it, you say, I need something to say they lived and they were here and they mattered." SGM was established in 2004. Gerken's family experienced the loss of three of their five children. Twin girls Faith and Grace were stillborn in 1996. They suffered from "twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome," in which one baby receives too much blood flow and nourishment in the womb and the other baby receives too little. A subsequent pregnancy two years later was a completely different situation, Gerken said. "Midway through we found out we had a son, and he did not have kidneys," she said. "We continued the pregnancy to term, and he lived for six hours after he was born." The couple also had a son before the losses and a son afterwards, so they have two living children and a 19-month-old granddaughter. Gerken said about eight years after they lost Faith and Grace, a friend was going through a difficult pregnancy that led to her baby being stillborn. "It was sort of like waking up for me," she said. "It was the first time I asked myself what would I have wanted." She thought a memory book for babies with brief lives would be nice. "A place to say this baby lived, this baby was here, but there wasn't one," Gerken said. She went down to the basement and fired up her old computer. "It was 1998 I think, home publisher clip art, you know. And I'm crying and writing and making these pages, and I handmade each one in a binder. I was gluing little buttons on," she recalled. She later created a professionally printed memory book based on the scrapbook with places for parents to journal the dreams they had for their baby, their journey of loss and healing and letters to the baby. A comfort bear came next. The cream-colored, soft fleece bears were created by Gerken's mother, Kathy. "She actually made the comfort bears until 2006. She passed away in 2006 after a battle with cancer at the age of 50," said Gerken. Now a group of women sew bears that go all over the world. "We have shipped items to every state in the U.S. and 35 countries worldwide. Over 25,000 families have received some sort of support or resources from us, from here in little Deshler, Ohio," smiled Gerken. The ministry continued to grow. "I had a blog and was connecting with mothers online who had been through loss," she said. "It really opened up to a whole world. When you go through the loss of a baby, you feel alone, especially back then." In the late 1990s, Gerken said she didn't have a cell phone or computer to communicate with others. "You weren't talking about this in society. So I held my babies, we planned a funeral, we buried them and then you're grieving pretty much alone," she said. A "Walking With You" series of books has been added for grieving moms, dads and grandparents. Gerken also wrote her own family's story, "Sufficient Grace: Standing in the Sacred Place Where Heaven Meets Earth," which was originally published in 2014. "In 2006, we realized there was little to no education for medical professions on what to do when a baby dies, even though one in four pregnancies ends in loss," she said. Yet parents were looking for their help through this time, "where they have to fit a lifetime of love and memories into moments," she said. "And if they haven't been told what to do, what happens? Then the parent has regrets, and they don't have the support and the resources they need." By 2013, SGM created its perinatal hospice and bereavement support services. They now can send comfort doulas who are trained in perinatal and neonatal loss support and remembrance photographers into hospitals when a baby dies, if parents want the service. The doulas take along supplies such as clothing for babies in any gestation, memory-making items, keepsakes, books and resources. "They go to hospitals throughout the state. They've been to 94 hospitals and funeral homes," Gerken said. That includes Promedica and Mercy hospitals and health systems, the Cleveland Clinic and Blanchard Valley Hospital. The ministry has about 200 volunteers now. Of those, 100 are crafters who make anything that might be needed for a tiny baby from a gown and hat to blankets and wraps. "It means so much to the family that something will fit their baby," Gerken said. Another volunteer made 1,400 keepsake bracelets last year — one for the baby and a matching one for mom that reads "Always in My Heart" in Morse code. A more masculine version is available for dad. Looking back, Gerken said she had no idea things would turn out the way they have. "I was a mom who knew what grief was, and I had found comfort from God in my grief and believed absolutely that He could make beauty from ashes," she said. "But I just wanted to help other people. It was just kind of waking up to that need eight years later. I took that time to heal first which I think is important that when you do something like this, it's not to fill a void in yourself but to meet a need for other people." "We just want these parents to know we're here," she added. SGM is a Christian faith-based organization but serves families of all faiths, said Gerken. They are donor supported, and all of their services are free to families. She said it costs the organization about $1,000 per family. To help with those costs, several fundraisers are held each year including a golf outing in July, a Giving Tuesday event up by Toledo and a remembrance walk and 5K in October which is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. Gerken said the event draws about 1,000 people from all over the state and beyond who come to walk and remember their babies.