Star of the Week

Recently I have sat down several times to post and just found what I was going to write would be therapeutic for me but what a downer for those few who read this blog. We are in the quiet time of our journey to Gabriel....the beginning of the "waiting phase" and I have found it to be hard in a ton of ways. Ways that all stem from how a family learns to live again and enjoy life after the death of a child. This is an ongoing process that our sweet Jesus is walking with us day by day. His presence is still so close and for that I am so grateful. So to share in the "yuck" of the process is good but sometimes it makes it harder...if that makes any sense. So I am realizing now that posting is a great way for me to chart our progress, our regressions and just our little family's life. I am a terrible journal writer and even worse scrap-booker. I have never kept up with either and married a guy who is even worse than me at "officially" documenting memories. This reality smacked me in the face this weekend.

Grace is the "star of the week" for her first grade class this coming week. We had to do a poster "of her life". Now, since she is only 6 1/2 and the first 10 months of her little life are unknown, other than residing in a SWI, you would have thought this would be easy. WRONG!! First thing that hit me is how many pictures are still on a memory stick and have never been developed. Second, was our home videos and how "not up to date" we are in that area. Our camcorder is one that still uses VHS tapes...you know the "big momma jamma" type. So all the tapes from Grace's Forever Family day until now really need to be put to DVD. We just have not had the resources to go out and get the "latest" of anything for a long time. Then....oh, so many things I need to do and have left go by the wayside. The realization that since August of 2008 our family life has just been on autopilot in so many ways is hard to face. The family album stopped in Oct. 2006 after we moved to TN and after that everything is scattered pics and undeveloped memories.

What was/is wrong with me? When did I loose control? When was the last time I had it? I felt the old Jo's overwhelmed emotions starting to creep back to the surface. The enemy in all his subtle, sneaky ways tried to tear down my feelings of adequacy in all areas in a matter of minutes. I then stopped everything.....put down the pictures and prayed. Prayed for God to give me the strength and courage to sort through painful, memory soaked photos and to keep me focused on Grace. Grace who anxiously sat with excitement about her special week at school and the project that was to be "fun" not "overwhelming". That is something this Jo does now....I pray for strength even in the face of the smallest of hurdles......He listens and He sends me peace. Here is the finished project.


I smile now that it is done knowing one more hurdle cleared. The hurdle of facing your life in color..colored pictures that carry the memories before "that" life ended(so to speak). You see I look back and with just ache and see what we looked like and acted like before we lost Anna. What a melancholy feeling washes over me when I look at the beginnings of our family with Grace and our life back in VA. How so many things changed with our move to TN. How far God has taken us and how He has carried us every step. First in preparation of His plan, then carried through the storm that shook us to our cores and now how out of the debris we are rebuilding. Rebuilding but also taking note of how blessed we were then and missed it. We took things for granted that those pictures & family videos show us so clearly.....we missed things because our walk was different. To the outside eye they might not see much of a difference but to me I see a world & lives changed forever. Forever in good and forever in bad. The good is that I would never want to look back and not see Anna. I would never want to look and not see the changes her little life made to ours. The good in what came out of something so heart-wrenching. The bad is that I look back and see the hole that remains after she left. Parallel life....joy and pain. I wonder will I ever get my thick skull to understand it completely? Maybe the day I do not have to walk in the pain anymore I will look back on it and completely "get it". Until then I believe it will be one of those mysteries in the miracle called my life. So I am grateful for this project that came up now. It has made me face some things I have placed away in a closet. Things I know I need to face, place and memorialize accordingly. Things that not only make up my life but Grace's. I need to print and album those pictures from the last 3 years and move to DVD all the videos so that she will not feel like I did.....overwhelmed by the past. What a great "hope-filled" project God handed me to do during this wait for Gabe.

Philippians 2:12-16a

"Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed-not only in my prescence, but now much more in my absence-continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose. Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold on to the Word of life----"

Hugs,
Jo