One Year Ago Today

December 15, 2014

One year ago today my life was quite different.

I woke up in my warm bed with my husband by my side. I grabbed the computer as we talked of our baby on the way, and I went in search for the very best baby book. Our little girl was soon to arrive and I wanted to make sure we had her baby book ready in the hospital bag just in case she arrived a few days early.

It was a day of checking things off our list.

We bought the baby book. I bought the sheets for the Pack n Play. And I bought my very last Christmas gift. After church we even went out to lunch and a movie for what we thought would be the last time before we'd need a babysitter.

I made the finishing touches to the nursery. And I wrote some of our last thank you notes for our very first shower. Some of you would later get thank you notes that had been re-written because after all that happened I couldn't very well send you a note that said 'we are so excited to meet our sweet girl soon!'

It was a day of finishing and a day of lasts. I finished the last blog posts before the baby was to arrive and as some of you may have seen last December, I set them to automatically post, and they did. I finished packing our bags, I took pictures of the nursery, and we took what we thought may be our last weekly pregnancy photo. We were right, it was our last, but not in the way we had imagined.

A year ago today I spent the day worried about our little girl. And although I was slightly reassured by the thought that she moved that afternoon, it wasn't really her moving. Although the doctor's don't know for sure, I have later been convinced that she died Saturday night. And it breaks my heart, because I cannot remember exactly the last time she really moved.

It was as if the Lord was preparing us though. He gave us Sunday; he gave us December 15th. To make the memories, to spend time together, to buy the baby book, to forever capture the little nursery that I would have never had the heart to photograph otherwise.

And then it was like we were ready.

A year ago today I went to sleep worried about my little girl, not knowing exactly what the next days and hours would bring.

I wish so very much that I had something so eloquently written to remember our sweet girl for Wednesday. For her birthday. And I am working on it, but the hours of sleep are short lately, for the most wonderful reasons, and some days it's write or sleep and my body most certainly chooses sleep.

But today's the fifteenth. Oh how we didn't know what was coming our way. The pain, but also the joy and glory and the deepness and the richness of our God's love. As we spent our Sunday expecting other things, I would never have expected to be given something so great. Something so great as grief and love.