She Brings Joy : Rainbow Baby

This Is The Day The Lord Has Made, Rejoice and Be Happy.

Last time I wrote I was a bit frustrated.

If you read my post about baby Meghan I'm sure you were surprised at the tone. I've been consistently focused on the goodness of God, and acceptance of things we don't understand, for quite some time.

And that's still where I'm at, spiritually. I am in a state of complete acceptance as far as my loss of Beatrix.

Every once in a while, however, the human nature which questions the will of God when terrible things happen, moves me away from the stability of the God Who Sees Me.

We forget that we have no control over events in this world.

We forget the God who tells us, "fear not".

We lean on our own understanding and believe we have better answers than the Creator of the entire universe.

Meghan is doing well. She's preparing to go home, and while the situation has changed drastically for her family, a new sense of normalcy may resume again soon.

Would I have felt so assured in my religious leanings of things had gone differently?

Yes.

This morning, when I woke up, I added an extra little step to our morning prayers. Before we began, I took my toddler girl's tiny hands in mine, and had her repeat after me: "this is the day the Lord has made, rejoice and be happy."

I'm not talking about memorizing a verse, but beginning the day with the acknowledgement that each day is in the hands of someone who has much more wisdom than I could even conceive of.

I want my daughter to know she's held.

I want her to know, no matter what troubles this world brings, she's safe. I want her to wake in the morning with the comprehension that whatever life throws at her, whether it be death of a loved one or financial ruin, she's cared for by a God who clothes the lilies in splendor and knows how many feathers the sparrow has on its wing.

I want her to internalize the idea of God's goodness as a buffer against a world which will toss so many problems her way.

I want her to understand she was created for this moment, whatever this moment is.

My human fears come from a place of great weakness.

My human fears come from feeling a lack of control in the universe.

I don't want my own daughter to walk in fear. I want her to be strong and capable because she is being counted as significant by the One who created the universe that feels so out of control.

I don't want her to ever move away from the stability of the God Who Sees Me, questioning her own moral compass as understood through her faith.

I will give her the knowledge that "this is the day the Lord has made", in hopes that when she faces trials she will not falter. And when she does falter -- she will know that yet again, she is faltering on a day the Lord has made.

Friday, September 30, 2016
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Capture Your Grief, October 2015- All The Rest, Thus Far

Baby Loss

Thursday, October 29, 2015
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If I Could Change Anything I would....

Acceptance

This post is for a writing challenge on the phrase "If I could change anything I would." Every Tuesday there's a new challenge. You can join HERE.

I want to write a beautiful post about how accepting things the way they are, leads to peace.

I want to be big enough to say:

If I could change anything, I would change nothing.

However, all I feel after writing this sentence is electricity in my skin. Everything in me pushes against acceptance. When I close my eyes, I am standing at a precipice and acceptance feels like I am making a decision to throw her off of the edge. Acceptance feels like every nerve in my body is focused on “no”.

I could also claim that if I could change anything, I would change everything.

But that would mean my sweet M may not be here, and as I look down at her sweaty curls and her grubby fingertips, I can't imagine a single second of my life without her.

Four and a half years is a long time to push the "what if things were different" out of your head.

This beautiful post could be about fluctuation and entire seasons of change. It could be about imagining a world where both of my girls are sitting together with their foreheads touching, whispering in the dark. It could be about a world where possibility is immeasurable, and innocence is intact.

But it's not. Because when the subject of change comes up, my mind always races to her. Would I change the circumstances of her birth and death? That question is too laden with sub-context for me to answer.

Four and a half years is a long time to ruminate on changing a single event in your life.
At one time, I expressed my post-loss existence as having one foot in heaven, and one foot on earth. If I lean too far towards either place I will eventually lose my balance and end up crumpled on the ground, being nowhere at all.

Imagining change is too difficult in this context. The ramifications of either choice would be too life-altering.

I guess, ultimately, this means I would change nothing.

But there is no peace in this. There is only a raw aching feeling in my chest at having failed my girl.

{I feel I must reference back to this, an all-encompassing post on acceptance, after writing today’s post. If I would have chosen anything other than my loss for this prompt, it would have been disingenuous. However, I am most definitely in the camp of acceptance.... almost all of the time.}