The moon still shines: What I learnt in my grief after losing our three-day-old son

I had everything planned. 

As someone who runs a company with my husband, Giden, I live on a schedule. I know how to prepare. So when our second child was finally on his way, I approached his arrival the way I approached most things in life – with intention.  

We had chosen my delivery date, were deep into planning our new house renovation, and had handed things over at our business. I had a checklist, and I had ticked every box. 

What I didn’t have a checklist for was what came after. 

The life we built 

Before I go into that, I should tell you a little bit about Giden, because he is at the centre of this story too. 

His mother owned a flower shop, and he had been quietly working on an e-commerce strategy for her business. When I first heard about it, I said – rather offhandedly – “Wow, you’re so talented.”  

Apparently, that was all he needed. He took it as a sign that I was interested in him. I was not, at the time. But he won me over anyway. 

We built a life together. We started a business together, Bloomthis, which grew into Malaysia’s leading floral and gifting company. And eventually, when our firstborn, Sierra, came along, it felt like everything was falling into place.  

Sven’s arrival felt like the final piece of a beautiful picture Penny and Giden had created together.

And then Sven was coming, and he felt like the final piece of a beautiful picture we had created.  

Precious three days  

Sven Gideon Lim was born on October 18, 2025, full-term and at a healthy weight. For a moment, everything felt right. 

And then it didn’t. 

He had trouble breathing. He was rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) before I barely had time to hold him.  

The doctors told us he had Persistent Pulmonary Hypertension of the Newborn (PPHN), a condition where a newborn’s circulatory system fails to make the transition to breathing outside the womb.

Sven Gideon Lim.

His tiny body was fighting a battle we couldn’t fight for him.

The helplessness – that’s the thing no one prepares you for. You are his mother. You carried him for nine months. You planned every detail of his arrival.  

But now he is behind the glass, hooked up to machines, and there is absolutely nothing you can do. You cannot take the pain for him. You cannot fix it. You can only stand there, and watch. 

Penny and Giden in the hospital before Sven’s arrival.

At 6am, I called our close friends and asked if they could come to the hospital to pray with us. Half an hour later, our friends – a husband and wife pair – walked through the door in their sleepy clothes, hair uncombed, having rushed straight out of bed.  

That is the kind of love that doesn’t announce itself. It just appears. 

With them, Giden and I, and our daughter Sierra, pleaded with God for Sven’s life. We sang. We prayed. We waited in that small, impossible space between hope and grief. 

But on October 21, 2025, at 9.20am, Sven passed away. He was three days old.  

In the end, it was God’s will to give us Sven, and His will to take him away.  

That sentence has sat in my chest for months now. Some days it brings peace. Some days it is the hardest thing I have ever had to believe. 

A girl with no one to pray to 

I grew up in Hulu Langat, a township on the outskirts of the Klang Valley.  

My childhood was not a peaceful one. There were arguments at home, broken relationships, the quiet weight of financial strain that children absorb even when no one explains it to them. 

My father was an atheist. He believed religion was a cage, and he taught us to be masters of our own lives, and to look to no one.   

I understood, even as a small girl, that he meant this lovingly. But it left me feeling utterly alone with my own questions. 

On the hardest days, I would go to my bedroom window and look out at my neighbour’s altar. I don’t know exactly how old I was maybe seven or eight.  

I just remember that I had nowhere to put what I was feeling, and that altar was the only sacred thing I could see. So I prayed to it. I didn’t know who or what I was praying to; I only knew I needed something bigger than myself to hear me. 

Looking back now, I believe God was already listening. Not because of what I prayed to, but because of who He is. 

When I was six, my paternal grandmother, who was a Christian, brought me to church just once. I don’t remember much about that day. But something was planted – a seed so small I didn’t even know it was there. 

In secondary school, a good friend invited me to a church camp. For the first time in my life, I felt I could actually pour my heart out to Someone.  

I didn’t accept Christ right then, but I met Jesus there, and I never forgot Him. It wasn’t a dramatic conversion moment. It was more like recognising a face I had seen before but had never been formally introduced to. 

With her husband, Giden, Penny co-founded Bloomthis, Malaysia’s leading floral and gifting company.

The path to Him continued quietly. At university, I won a partial scholarship in Food Science and Nutrition, and as part of my agreement, I worked at a subsidiary company managing student hostels.  

One evening, I walked into the office and found the boss reading his Bible. He looked up and asked me, simply: “Do you know Jesus?” 

After that conversation, I stepped into church at 18. Not long after, I gave my life to Him. 

I do not think any of it was a coincidence – not the neighbour’s altar, not the grandmother, not the camp, not the man with the Bible.  

I think God was patient with me in all those years of searching. He let me find Him at my own pace, meeting me at every window I looked out of.  

And it was exactly that foundation – learning that He is present even when I cannot feel Him – that held me upright as I watched my newborn son in the NICU. 

Labouring in vain 

Strangely, I did not feel angry with God after losing Sven. What I felt was something quieter and perhaps heavier. 

We had planned so carefully – the delivery date, the house renovation, the handover at work. We had prepared a whole life for him to arrive into. And then he was gone, and I was left looking at all of it – the time, the effort, the hope, and thinking: What was any of it for?

It felt like we had laboured in vain. 

There is a verse I keep coming back to: “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain.” (Psalm 127:1)

I had been building. I had been planning and preparing and ticking every box. But I had forgotten, or perhaps I had never fully understood, that none of it was ever really in my hands.

That was not a comfortable realisation. But it was a freeing one. Because if I was never truly in control, then losing Sven was not a failure of my planning. It was not something I could have prevented by doing more or preparing better. 

It was held by Someone whose purposes are larger than mine, and whose love for Sven, and for me, I have no reason to doubt.  

After Sven’s passing, I understood something about God that I had known intellectually for years but had never felt so viscerally. 

He sent His Son to die for us.  

I had said those words hundreds of times. But in the days after we lost Sven, those words cracked open into something I had no language for.  

To willingly give your child – to let him suffer, when you have the power to stop it – for people who don’t even understand what you’re doing for them. That is an incomprehensible kind of love. And God did it, for all of us. 

In our grief, God’s Word kept finding us through Psalm 127:4. Our son was a reward from God – an arrow He had placed in our hands to touch hearts and impact lives.  

Sven’s story, I believe, is not finished. He was here for three days and he has already changed how I see everything. 

Our community held us up in ways I will spend the rest of my life being grateful for. A friend cooked confinement food for me – a practical, grounding act of love that told my body: You are still here, you still need to heal. Generous hearts reached out from all over.  

People were, as I kept thinking, the hands and feet of Jesus. Even in the darkest place, grace showed up with a face. 

The moon lamp on the stairs 

Among the gifts we received after Sven’s passing was a children’s book, The Moon is Always Round by Jonathan Gibson. We read it often and have returned to it again and again. 

The idea is simple: The moon seems to change its shape in the sky, but the moon itself never actually changes. It is always whole. We just don’t always see all of it. 

A picture of the moon, taken by Penny, that reminds her of the never-changing attributes of God.

I think about that a lot now. Some days I am living in joy. Some days the grief comes for me. Some days God feels very near, and some days I am reaching for Him in the dark.  

But what I have come to understand is that none of that changes who He is. He does not change in shape. I just don’t always see all of Him at once. 

In our new home, we have placed a moon lamp on the stairway. It shines there every day – a quiet, faithful reminder. It is the first thing I see when I come downstairs in the morning. 

I live in a dual reality now. There is sadness, yes. There is an ache that I don’t think ever fully leaves you when you lose a child. But there is also no despair.  

That is not me performing bravery. That is what faith actually does. It doesn’t remove the pain, but it gives the pain a place to sit that isn’t at the end of the story. 

Giden and I have learned to just plough on, day after day. Choosing integrity. Choosing kindness. Doing the right thing whether or not anyone is watching. 

My heart’s desire now is to steward Sven’s life well. That, as an arrow, he will hit every target God has purposed for him. That his three days on earth will ripple outward in ways we cannot yet see. 

In all that has happened, we have experienced the goodness of God. In the grief. In the community. In the moon lamp on the stairs. He does not change His shape and form, no matter what shape of Him I get to see each day. 

And so I cling to hope that at the end of the road, all that is left will be good. 

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