Here She Comes

I've always been the kind of person who agonizes over things in the dark. Life seems huge. Whatever detail I need to take care of may as well be Mt. Everest at night. But, when I wake up and light shines on the thing, it's a manageable pebble. Or maybe it's still Mt. Everest but I've suddenly been training my entire life to climb it. The world looks different when the sun shines on it.

Until now.

At night, I've made it though an entire day. In the morning, there are things to be done and beds to get out of and clothes to put on and all I really want to be able to do is rewind time and figure a way to change the outcome.

I know that God is in control. I know that He is sovereign. I know that there are reasons, well beyond my own understanding, for His calling Kate home before she ever took a breath. I know it like I know that the sun will come out in the morning. I trust Him.

Still, even in all of that, I long to hold my daughter. And, for whatever reason, the mornings are hard. The mornings are when I remember the joy and anticipation our family experienced, together, as we waited for her arrival. The mornings are when I think about how we had to tell the boys that their sister was gone and how Matthew kept saying that we were lying. The mornings are when I want to pull the covers up over my head and create an alternate universe where Kate is still due in five weeks.

At night I feel hope.

In the morning I feel grief.

Kiah, who reads my blog, sent this to us in the mail. It's just beautiful and I love it so much.

Psalm 56:8 says, "You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book." I am so incredibly thankful that I have a personal relationship with my Savior. To know that the God of the universe loves me enough to record my sorrows in His book brings such peace in the sadness.

My friend, Sabrina, sent us the cross with Kate's name on it and Troy put together this shadow box.

An ultrasound photo. Flowers from her casket. Tiny footprints. A stuffed giraffe. The details of one, tiny life, contained in a frame. 

But that one, tiny life has changed so many. Like a rock thrown into the water. The rock disappears, down to the deep, but the ripples it leaves move on and on, impacting everything.

My friend, Lori, sent me the words to this poem by Luther Beecher. It's beautiful and, when I find myself in the place of aching for Kate to be screaming at me and keeping me up at night, I read it and remember that she is not gone. She's just not here with me.

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch until at last she hangs
like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says,
"There she goes!"
Gone where?
Gone from my sight...that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the place of destination.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment
when someone at my side says, 
"There she goes!"
there are other eyes watching her coming...
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout...
"Here she comes!"