3 years...

Today has been so strange. I had heard when I first began this journey of being a babylost momma, that you would have hard times and then realize that its because its a certain time of year or something.... I feel like so many times I feel as if I have forgotten so many things about him. I wish that all those special things would stay with me forever. Like how he smelled or how he felt in my arms, or how it felt when wrapped that one little arm around my shoulder when I held him. The truth is, I don't take the time to remember like I need to. It's just so hard to put it back when I get it all out and start to examine it. It makes me so tired and feel a hundred years old. I feel like someone else lived that life and had those horrible experiences and I was just a close bystander. Most of the time. But there are times that I get it all out and let myself feel it. I let myself remember the tube feedings, the long nights at the hospital just watching him breathe, the praying all hours of the day and night that I would just have enough faith for God to heal him, (and the anxiety and false burdens that lie brought with it). The fourth of July night that I held him and talked with our good friends forever after the fireworks about the hope I had for his full recovery. And then the feeding him that last cup of formula and laying him down right next to my heart. How he looked all curled up beside me and how effortlessly he drifted off to sleep, safe in momma's arms. The feeling of deep, aching sadness the next morning when the doctor came out with tears in his eyes to tell us there was nothing more he could do, he was just so sorry. The feeling of hurt and betrayal I had with God, but mostly myself for not having the faith I was supposed to have for Him to heal my son. And then the lifting of that burden as my Papa God took that lie from me and replaced it with the truth of who He is and where my Jace was now... and the comfort of my friends and my family that held us and carried us as we started down this dark, lonely road. The journey had begun... the journey of loss, and hope, and pain so deep it literally felt that I was broken, and trust in my Jesus that He knows my deepest fears and the deepest parts of my heart that even I am unfamiliar with. I began to know Him truly as my hiding place. I miss my Jace. That is where I am this year. I just miss him with everything in me. I wish so hard that I could touch his face, or rub his little feet again, help him eat or cheer him on while he tried so hard to relearn those things that come so naturally to everyone else.... I ache to hold him... physically ache. Sometimes I feel like I just need to hold him or I won't make it another day. But my sweet Papa God takes me though and we come out the other side. Sometimes it takes so much longer than I thought it would and other times we are there so fast. I just have thought so many times about the words to one of my favorite songs by Sara Groves. He is my hiding pace and fills my broken heart with songs. He sings of how the weak are strong. And He never meant for me to walk alone. He is always for me, as the truest lover of my soul. He hears my desperate calling, He has kept my feet from falling and He set me on this rock on which I'm standing now. I love that He will never leave me. I love that, when it comes down to it, that He never promised us that we wouldn't hurt. That that is just this world that we inherited. But that what His promise was was that when everything fell, we'd be held. That's all. And so very comforting to me...

Held

Two months is too little,

They let him go,

They had no, sudden healing.

To think that Providence would

Take a child from his mother while she prayed

Its appalling.

Who told us, we'd be rescued

What has changed and

Why should we be saved from nightmares?

We are asking why this happens

To us who have died to live

Its unfair.

This is what it means to be held

How it feels

When the sacred is torn from your lives

And you survive

This is what it is to be loved

And to know

That the promise was when everything fell,

We'd be held

This hand is bitterness,

We want to taste it, let the hatred numb our sorrow

But the wise hand opens slowly to lillies of the valley and TOMORROW