Three Months

Lili is three months today. I can barely believe it. I made a photo book of her and it just came yesterday. I was so glad because I think one of my fears is forgetting her. Forgetting what she looks like, smelled like, acted like. Forgetting what it was like to hold her in my arms as well as keep her in my heart. My brain has a hard time, too. I am back at work and although I KNOW it is June, every time I go to write the date, I write March (and I write the date a lot for my job). It is like the time with her happened in this alternative reality and now I don’t know what to do with that. I am afraid to let her go (afraid I will forget) but afraid to hold on (knowing she is not mine to hold onto). It is a strange place to be. Oh little Lili. Yesterday someone asked us what we did with her memories emotionally. Joa said he was not sure where our memories of her were, but it that was a good place, not a dark place. I am really grateful for all God has brought out of this experience.

Partly because of grief, and partly because I am a do-er, I have done tons of things around the house I have never done before. Stained and sealed our fence. Made a sidewalk with gravel. Caulked a bathtub, a bathroom sink, and a kitchen sink. Grouted the bottom of a shower. Sealed our shower stone tiles.

And then there are the things I haven’t done in so long but now getting around to. Found and killed a hornet’s nest. Cleaned a very, very dirty oven (that was a LOT harder than killing the hornets! It somehow seemed that most of an apple pie was on the bottom, charred and sealed on the bottom of the oven). Sprayed and sprayed all around the house to keep all the bugs outside in the heat. Cleaned the windows inside and out.

In the midst of all that physical work that frees your mind for other things, God has made it clear it is time for a new direction in my life. Without the break from my old life (and I guess current life), I never would have slowed down enough or been willing to take a second look enough to see this. It was a clean break from everything in my life as I lived in San Antonio for four weeks to be with her, and it was time God used to get my attention, to prepare me for something new. I laugh, maybe a little ironically, that apparently God literally needed to uproot me, take me away from all the familiar and comfortable, to bring about this change. Wow, what lengths He went through in order to orchestrate His best good for me. I am thankful He did. I am thankful He let me love His little girl while He did some work on my heart.

The details are not quite all together yet. Stay posted, though. I love that God is doing something new out of such great loss. Isaiah 43:19 "See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland." What an amazing God we have.