Two Years Ago...

Wow… two years ago tomorrow. Over two years now we have been on this journey… Some days it feels like last week, some days it feels like a lifetime ago.

I look back at where I stood a year ago… even six months ago, and I’m humbled and grateful at the growth and healing that I’ve slowly started to experience the last while. I fully realize this is a joint journey for our family, with each of us individually traveling the same road of love and loss, but we as individuals are also completely linked and woven amid each other. Our hurts, our realities, our healing, our weakness, our strength, our grasp, our growth… all separate, and yet all relationally linked to one another through the dynamics of every day interaction and survival.

For the first time in a long time, I finally feel the threads and tapestry of our family have started to strengthen. There are still days, moments, minutes, when our fabric starts to fray and unravel, but the overall health and vibrancy have finally been “kicked up a notch” (to use a common phrase from our family's vocabulary).

I am still cursing Eve and her damn apple. I still have no idea why God would choose this to be the avenue He felt necessary to get our attention, to change us, to define us from. I still desperately wish all of this had gone so differently, that there would be a tiny red haired, blue eyed stubborn little one making us a family of five. Well, we are a family of five, we just have to continue to live as a family of four during this short duration on earth.

Even though we didn't choose this, it chose us and we will continue to pick up the pieces of our shattered dreams and lost little lives every single day.  There are good days and we celebrate, there are hard days and we mourn.  There are even a few just "mediocre" days, which are actually cause for great rejoicing.  Because the return of mediocre, is in all reality, exquisitely extraordinaire!

It has not been easy, but life for everyone is no walk in the park.  Our reality, and our hard, is no different, than any of your "not easy" realities and situations.  It is my prayer that you will stand firm, hold strong, embrace the mess, and continue forward as well.

When your feet and body weigh a million pounds from the loads and burdens you carry, remember you don't have to go it alone. Turn to others, turn to God, and allow yourselves to be carried. Find strength in your weaknesses, find hope in your lost, find joy in your sorrows.

As I look for my strength and joy, I have finally been able to get through all of our journal entries to share Faith's entire story. (to read the 8 new final entries that I have recently back-posted, click HERE)  We have bravely chosen to publicly start sharing our story, share our deepest dreams and fiercest fears, our failures and successes, and how we have continued to see God clearly at work through this story, and this journey.

"Calling isn't limited to vocation, it's rooted in God's creativity and how He's designed us.  As I consider the truth of these words, our purpose began when God formed us, and He continues to call us as long as we have breath.  The psalmist wrote it this way: "For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother's womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."  God appointed His purpose for each of us, even in our mothers' wombs."  (Rebekah Lyons, "You Are Free")

Faith may not have been granted breath, but she was granted a grand purpose, even if only from within my womb.  It is our hope that we will continue to share her story, our Journey to Faith, well.  Even though her life may have been far too short, it is my prayer that her purpose and legacy will be more mighty and meaningful than imaginable.  She may have not been given the magical dash of life granted between the dates of her birth and the dates of her death, like the rest of us have gotten the privilege of receiving, but in that missing dash, it is my hope and prayer that many, many accomplishments will still be associated with her, for her, and through her.

May my family and myself continue to live and love, after this loss, in a most extraordinary way.  May we continue to live and love all of ourselves, our family, our friends, and our world in a most extraordinary way.

May the impact and reason for her life reach far beyond her loss.

May everyone I know, may everything I touch, be filled with a magical legacy of the dash she never got to fill here on earth.  May all those around us simply know, see, and be personally touched by the joy and greater worth we are growing from and finding within our loss.

May the littlest of things, the shortest of lives, the tiniest heartbeats of life, continue to cause the biggest catalysts of change and growth, through a ripple effect from the very core of our hearts, through the very core of the entire world around us.

{ Previous blog post "Just Choose Happy" HERE }
{ missed our previous Journey To Faith journal entries, click HERE }

{ next post "Cleaning Our Junk Drawers" HERE }