Four Months

I was very aware this last weekend that Eden's four month birthday was passing... that the days that numbered her all too short life were once again upon me.

I thought about what she'd likely be doing. She'd be moving on to pureed food and probably sitting up... if she followed after her siblings, she'd likely be sleeping for nice long stretches...

I wanted to write, just to remeber her. In the absence of holding her in my arms, I wanted to hold her in my thoughts and words...but the fact is, I was to busy to sit and formulate a post. Life continues to go on, the world continues to rotate and quiet moments get swallowed up.

I thought about Eden a lot. I missed her terribly. My heart did not break from the grief but she will be a missing piece of me until I stand before the Lord and he places her tiny hand in mine.

I have had the unique opportunity to become friends with another mother who found out shortly after I found out about Eden's anencephaly, that her sweet baby would also die shortly after his birth. It is a strange relationship in that we are in different countries and have never even heard each other's voices, yet we are eternally connected by this shared journey...

I wrote to her tonight and thought that these were the things I'd like to share here as well...

It's amazing isn't it? How completely upside down everything seemed and felt for those months we carried our little ones with the knowledge we would only have, if we were lucky, a few moments with them here on earth...and now it's so, relatively, normal? It seems to me, at times, to be both my greatest blessing and deepest heartache...that life is once again, so normal.

We are truly blessed, you and I. It sounds crazy, I know. But I do not feel cursed for what I had with my Eden. I feel blessed for the experience...not a blessing I'd ever hope for again, mind you...but blessed all the same.

This Sunday God brought James 1:2-4 to me. I hear James 1:2 all the time, but the latter verses spoke to me even more.

"2 Dear brothers and sisters,^[a] when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 3 For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4 So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing."

I feel like a totally renewed creature. I know I haven't reached perfection yet but I stand on an assurance and faith I hadn't ever imagined attainable by me, now.

I have a confidence in who I am in God now, that I never knew before. I know I am not nearly where He desires me to end up...but I am very certain that I *am* on the path He has paved for me... and there is a blessing in that that overwhelms me.