Happy 2nd Birthday, Elise!

Happy Birthday, Elise!

Today we should be holding you, singing Happy Birthday, and helping you blow out two little candles.  Instead, we'll be eating cupcakes in the cemetery after the kids get out of school.  Another year has passed without you in my arms.  Time is pulling us further apart, but my heart is just as close to you as ever.

I am so happy that you survived labor and birth.  I am so thankful that you are part of our lives.  We got 4 days with you!!!  Beautiful, love-filled days. 

Most days, I still have moments where I can't breathe because I miss you so much.  You are so loved and so missed.  The pain is still just as raw, but it has become a part of my daily life, instead of defining it.

I love you Elise! 

I loved these tiny little overlapping finger!  Overlapping fingers is a marker for Trisomy 18, but it just made me love her even more.

Elise's beautiful face, free from tubes.

You ARE loved!

Perfect in every way.

The year Elise died, I started a garden for her.  I searched through many plant nurseries for a flower that would bloom around her birthday.  I found two and planted them.  One came back last year, but didn't bloom.  This year it did bloom!  And it's blooming on her birthday. 

 Thank you for remembering Elise with me on her birthday, and always.

Oh, Holy Saturday...

Holy Saturday...

A day suspended between death and life.  Between crucifixion and resurrection.  Despair and joy.

Elise was born on Holy Saturday in 2014.  What a perfect day for her to be born...the significance of it hadn't dawned on me until today.

In the morning of that Holy Saturday, we hoped and waited...yet we also grieved.  We grieved for what might be the end of our time on Earth with our sweet Elise.  Though she was alive in my tummy, we weren't sure if she would make it through labor and delivery. 

We were suspended between the fear of death and the hope of life.

The last photo taken of me while I was pregnant...less than an hour before Elise was born.

 And then, in a whirlwind of events, she was here!  She was born and she was ALIVE!!!

Thanks be to God, and Hallelujah!  She was alive!

As we wait in stillness this Holy Saturday for the glory of Jesus's resurrection, I am completely overwhelmed by what God was showing us in His perfect timing...how we waited for Elise, with tears and fear and anxiety (as we had been prepared by many doctors for her to be stillborn)...and how abundantly we were filled with JOY at her birth and life.  In those moments holding her for the first time, I was so full of joy that my heart could have exploded.  We thought she might be dead, that she would come out silent...and here she was... ALIVE! 

We thought she might be dead.  But she was ALIVE.
They thought that Jesus was dead...but on Easter Sunday, he was ALIVE. 

Happy Easter weekend, everyone.

"Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me." -John 14:1