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