Remembrance, Grief, and Moving On...Day by Day

Just sharing part of my heart today...pardon any rambling.

It was about year ago today that hubby and I lost our baby and I had the month of limbo before it was all over. A month and a half before, I had lost my Grandma T. to cancer.  And just a couple months ago, my Grandpa T. passed away as well.

It's been a tough year.

If I keep busy, I seem to do fine and not notice anything is amiss really.  Things are Normal.  Life goes on.  But there are times that I find myself still, and alone with my thoughts, or a song or a phrase or something triggers a memory and a feeling and things crop up a bit again.  I contemplate the meaning of life, and eternity, and yearn for my loved ones.

The pain is there, though less. Different. Not quite as raw, but still there.

My faith and my hope in the Lord Jesus Christ has only gotten stronger as I journey through this time.  God is good, ALL the time. There are things He can see, that I can't. His way is perfect. He blesses us and cares for us each day.  It's funny how, when life is hard, all of the "extra" things are stripped away and I am pulled close to Him.  My perceptions change and trivial things truly don't matter anymore.  Perhaps hard things are His way of reminding me what is important in life. Because He loves me.

I have a feeling this is somewhat what is described as a "refining fire", where the impurities are burned away and the gold emerges, pure. May it be so.  May I be cleansed.  May my faith point to Him and His saving grace.  For it is Christ who has pulled me through and given me hope, and not myself. 

As my Grandpa T. did, I too look forward to my "long home" as mentioned in Ecclesiastes 12:5....where I will one day see my Savior face to face. And I will get to see my Grandma and Grandpa again.  And the child I haven't met yet.  And get the answers to the questions I can't answer right now. 


I wonder whether I will forever associate the fall and back-to-school season with the loss of our child.  Ivy, our 6 year old daughter, asked me the other day at the dinner table when I was going to have a baby. It was on her first day of school last year that I sent her on the bus, telling her that Mommy and Daddy were going to the doctor's office to get pictures of the baby......only to have me pick her up at the bus stop after school and to give her the bad news (that I'm not sure she understood...or at least is still processing in her childlike way...since she asked just the other day, wondering just where the baby is...).

I don't understand it all, either, and feel like a child myself some days.  But I am a child with a Heavenly Father, who knows the answers and all the things I struggle with.

And that is enough.