It's April

I cannot believe that it is already April.

I told someone the other day that it feels to me like somewhere near mid-February. It feels like Valentine's day should be nearing soon. I'm not sure if it's the cold weather that's been lingering around or simply that for quite a while time stood still.

When Hannah was born the clock stopped. The days felt like weeks but often the weeks felt like days. Other than dating my journal entries I had little concept of time. A week later it was Christmas, but even after Christmas had passed it still felt like early December.

Soon the new year came and there was a slight lift. I knew it was January, but if you would have asked for the year I still would have said 2013. It wasn't supposed to be 2014 if my arms where still empty.

Each day I would continue to write. It helped. I started to wake with a purpose. I needed to get about the business of reading, writing, and healing. I spent mornings singing worshiping, and I spend some mornings singing and crying. In late morning I would read and write. But always I'd allow myself to feel.

But as the weeks passed I began to fill the afternoons with change. I began to put our kitchen back together. I cleared out the refrigerator, froze the leftovers from the yummy casseroles. I wrote thank you letters. And I put on my tennis shoes and I went walking, with the sunshine and everything.

Each day felt like a step forward, even if at times or moments it felt like ten or twenty steps back. My return to work was impending and that meant my six weeks was almost up. I knew I wanted to be ready, I knew I wanted to set aside as much time as I could to mourn. Not that I'd be finished mourning by six weeks, not at all, but once I went back to work I knew there would be eight less hours in the day to feel.

My doctor cleared me at my six weeks check up. No more restrictions, nothing to hide behind. Still pain, still hurt, still great sadness, but I was ready to turn my eye to the future to see what the Lord had waiting for me.

I jumped in to the exercise program at work. I jumped back into my daily tasks, the pile of things I had left on my desk in December. But I did it very slowly. Someone told me to make a list of one thing I could accomplish at work each day and set a goal to do at least that. When they told me, I remember thinking 'only one thing?' but then I returned and I realized how much of an accomplishment 'only one thing' really was.

The end of the first week was the hardest. I don't think I realized how much 'processing' I'd be missing out on because I was at work for eight hours a day. I had held in tears that needed to come out. And they did. All at once. And that was okay.

The weeks passed and things got more 'normal'. Or we started a new normal. I could do more every day at home and at work. At church I was reminded that there are others suffering, as easy as it was to think the world was all about us in such pain. At home I was reminded that I am still a wife to a wonderful man. And the Lord continued to remind me that he had a purpose for my life, he still does.

I won't pretend like every minute of every hour was hard. There were moments where somehow I would almost forget and I'd be laughing and smiling. Sometimes I would get busy and I'd be productive for the first time in a long time. But I will tell you that no matter how it looked on the outside every day was and is still hard. Sometimes it's only a few minutes, sometimes it's hours, sometimes it's tears, sometimes it's not. I remember someone saying to me, 'well, I'm sure there are still some times when it's hard.' I wanted so badly to let all my tears out and tell her it's not just hard 'some times' but that it's all the time.

Hannah is part of every moment of every second of my life. Not just 'some times.' But that doesn't mean that every moment is sad. Sometimes she makes me smile.

And each day I smile more. Each day I thank the Lord more that I got to be her mother.

And today it's April. I have no idea how April arrived so very fast. But it's April. And I want you to know that I smile often.