Two Years

     
Here we are again; another April, another birthday, a second year gone by. I love that she was born in April. She wasn't due in April - but April is an excellent month to remember her by. I love that I can go outside and see flowers blooming and smell dirt thawing out and hear birds chirping and be reminded of Phoebe. Her body was still so delicate when we met her, just like the fragile, new little petals on a half opened flower. She always reminded me especially of a Morning Glory - if you've ever looked at one really close up it makes sense that they don't last long into the day. You barely touch them and they begin to wilt....but they come and go, leaving behind nothing but proof that God is real.


I am at a loss for what to say. It's been said here many times, but the overwhelming feeling that has stayed with me from April 11th of two years ago is just this stunned astonishment that an experience that every mother dreads the very possibility of can be as incredible as it was, and is still. Our hearts were stretched and filled, every corner of them. Getting over the hump of the first month postpartum....shew, now that was a feat I never would have known I could be strong enough for. Am I glad that my baby daughter died? Of course not. But it's what happened, despite desperate prayers that it wouldn't and the best doctors on careful watch. So now, the only way to see it is as it is - she died and we are better for it. We glimpsed a clearer image of Christ's presence in the world - in all of you who tirelessly supported us; in birth; in a tiny, pure baby; in death; in the holiness that filled the room when God knew it needed to be there for us.


Yea, we may as well admit it already - God knows what He's doing and knew it all along. Cheers to Phoebe on her birthday, which is tomorrow April 11th, and through bittersweet tears we remember also the day she died, April 12th. Two years have gone by fast.