So much left of your story

My Precious Eden,

Tonight I wrote about what it was like to hold your baby sister in my arms for the first time.

I still miss you so much. I am still grateful for every second of your short little life. I wish you were tearing things apart with Zoe, but every day I see more and more of God's plan with you, and I know He has even more in store than I will ever understand.

I wish I could kiss you goodnight and smell your damp hair.

Someday, in eternity...

~Mama

"Yet still, hearing her precious cry and looking into her little face for the first time...those were nothing compared to that first moment where I could lay her on my chest and just drink her in.

Holding God's promise, skin to skin, in the quiet curtained space...I will never forget."

Trapeze Day

Eden,

I didn't get to write for your birthday yesterday. Not because I wasn't thinking about you, every second, but because life keeps going.

In the midst of your baby sister learning to stand, your bigger siblings doing school work, a major heat wave and daddy's interview...I remembered you.

I cried from such a dark place yesterday, the place that will never be whole because you celebrate every birthday in the arms of Jesus.

How can it have been four whole years since you breathed your first...and last?

How can there be a person in this family who never, ever met you?

How can Zoe have a sister who is just a story and some pictures?

If it's even possible, I miss you more this year than in years past. I am aching to remember the feel of your tiny body in my arms. To smell your sweet baby smell. To hear your little coos.

I have prayed a million times that I would get to hold you, just one more time. But if I ever got that one more? I'd just want another.

You are still so much a part of me, and of our world. You are still remembered by so many. Remembered an honored. Your legacy lives in trees, in bibles, in lives transformed, in souls saved...and still, you are so far from me.

Oh, my heart aches for more time with you.

Today I will remember you, fully alive. Today I will celebrate that you lived! I will celebrate by living myself. By remembering. By worshiping the God who gave you to me, even if it was for such a brief time.

I love you baby girl. So much. Forever.

Love,

Mama

Glimpses

I know I won't know the end of the story until I am standing face to face with Jesus.

I know I won't see the brilliance of God's plan or the wisdom in His decisions, in regard to Eden, until eternity.

I know this. But still, I am blessed when God gives me just the tiniest glimpse and I see reason behind what felt so wrong.

Every year, at the start of the school year, my husband sits in his classroom and asks God to help him find "just one kid" who he can share Jesus with. He asks God to help him see the students through the eyes of eternity. Every year.

When you pray like that, you always see the broken kids. You see the ones who support their families while still in high school. You see the ones who have a closer relationship with social workers than parents. You see the ones with everything stacked against them. You think "Oh, it's going to be that one."

God sees something different.

God sees the kid with the good parents and the nice life who laughs and surfs and hangs out with her daddy...he sees the needs deep in the heart of that kid. The kid who seems to have it "all together". God knows that he longs to love every student who walks through those classroom doors. That the broken kids are all the kids living without Him.

So God sets the appointments that He sees fit. At the times that work for each student.

God sits the nice surfer girl, with an idea that all Christians are judgmental and uptight, in a history class with a loud, funny, slightly irreverent teacher during the school year that will mark the most difficult time in his life.

That girl watches her teacher struggle with the death of his baby girl and listens to him share about a faith that remains, even when he doesn't understand what God is doing. She laughs at his jokes and helps him grade papers. She sees him with his family and gets to know his kids and wife.

She somehow becomes more than student, and becomes part of the family.

And three years later, that same girl, is standing in a baptismal, crying her eyes out with joy over her relationship with Christ. Ready to make a public commitment...and she's standing there with her dad!

If losing Eden helped to bring our good friend Brenna into a relationship with Christ, and into our family, it was worth it.

Eden is with Jesus for eternity...and now Brenna will be too.

Dear Eden,

Yesterday your baby sister smiled at me. It was the sweetest, crooked smile. The kind that they like to draw in cartoons. I smiled right back and then I was just the littlest bit sad...she smiles like you did.

You smiled, and I know those smiles were involuntary but what a blessing that they came more frequently in your final hours. That you smiled at your big sister and she will always hold that in her heart.

I still miss you. There is still someone missing in our home, but the soul crushing ache seems to be a bit less when I hold the baby sister who never got a chance to know you.

She also has the same little puffy spots just under her eyes. You two are the only ones who have that. It's very special. I love to see that she looks a little like you, in a special way.

I always tell people she is my 5th baby. You are still the fourth baby and you have not been forgotten or replaced in our hearts or minds.

I still miss you so much, I wish I could hold you again. I wish you were running around, making messes and creating chaos with the others. I can scarcely imagine what you and Jack would do together. We all miss out by having had to say good-bye so soon.

Good night sweet baby. I miss you so much,
Mommy

Ornaments

It's quiet in the house. Only the sound of rain falling outside and my kids laughing in it can be heard as I steal this moment to sit in front of the Christmas tree with my coffee in hand.

All the ornaments went up last night in a blur of excitement from three children that see the magic hanging from every hook. We talked about the meaning and reasons for each special one.

The puppet from the first Christmas I spent with my husband, then fiancee. A small tree in his apartment bedroom with the magical chasing lights and simple ball ornaments. Crammed in on Christmas Eve opening gifts with his roommates.

The ark from the year we knew we would be heading into parenthood and what that dream would mean.

The light up churches that reflect a that peace and hope I have always found within the sanctuary walls at our little home church. Ornaments that belonged to my husbands father, celebrating with Jesus in heaven for these last 11 Christmases.... the memories attached to these wood and resin trinkets go on and on.

Finally we got to the most special ornament of them all... A framed photo of a little girl that I would love to hold in my lap and chase from the tree, but who joins her Papa Dewey in celebrating Jesus' Birthday in his presence.

Merry Christmas little one.

Another Birthday

I can't help but wonder when I will know what to expect. Last year was sad but still a celebration of the sweet girl who changed our world...today was nothing but raw and painful. I spent the better part of today lost and terrified of the heaviness that washed over me. I felt little comfort from my loving God who opened up the sky to weep with me.

My older children shook with sobs that came from so deep they gladly went to bed an hour early.

It was just heavy and hard.

She never stops being gone. She's never coming back.

While I take great comfort in knowing each year brings us closer to reunion, it also takes us further from hello.

I miss my little girl so much.

Love Letter

It starts so simply...and then God in his abundance, finishes it so amazingly!

About two months after Eden's initial diagnosis, well into my journey, I was introduced to another mother destined to have to make the same types of decisions for her ill, not yet born, son.

There is something special about sharing with another member of our exclusive club. We share the lows, the highs, the good and the very honest and ugly parts. We understand what it is to rail at and into the arms of God. We hold each other together while still a mess ourselves. It is a beautiful thing really. Beautiful in it's raw emotion.

We cemented a bond that is beyond this life, which is wonderful considering we are separated by an entire country and had only met online, introduced by one of our dear friends that I, again, had only met online.

For months and months we have shared each step of our shared path, stopping along the way to get down in the dirt with the other...or to hold out a hand to help the other up. Sharing tea, and tears, and laughter...all through a little box on the desk.

In my dreams I wondered if we would ever meet this side of heaven. I doubted we would, but I hoped.

And then all of a sudden it was happening! A gift from God, given through a wonderful friend and I was on a plane to surprise this dear woman with whom I had shared so much. And for 4 days I sat in kitchens and living rooms on the other side of the continent and learned what it meant to love Canada with my whole heart.

I laughed in grocery stores and cried for the joy of new-but-not-really friends.

So, once again, God gives me a beautiful gift out of one of my darkest hours. It is so amazing to be loved so fully by the creator of the heavens and the earth.