On September 2, Ted and I celebrated 7 years of marriage. We toasted to God's grace getting us through almost 6 months of grief. Probably not something you're gonna find on an anniversary card.
Some of the milestones, unfortunately, are what I call missed milestones.
September 14 Chase would have been 18 months old. But there was no doctor's appointment. There was no weight check and a new percentile to write down and tell my family and friends. I didn't get to have the fun conversations with my mom friends about how huge Chase was in comparison to their kids. How his Samoan and Guillory genes were showing out!
Chase didn't get to accompany me this year to dropping Jaden off at his first day of preschool. He didn't get to see Jaden at sports class, hit the ball the farthest off the T. He wasn't sitting in my lap as we watched Jaden attempt his first karate class last night. It seems that for every milestone or new experience we go through with Jaden, not only do we mourn the fact that little brother is not there to watch, but we have to mourn the truth that little brother won't get the chance to do those activities.
And then there's the non-missed milestones, the actual ones that you really don't want to hit.
Monday, September 23 marked 6 months of Chase being safe in the arms of God in Heaven. On Monday the tension of the bleeding, yet triumphant, heart was intensified. On one side I was thankful that he's OK, that I'll see him again, that the end of this story is happy. Yet on the other side I was immobilized by heartache, taken down to a pit that I'll seem to never escape.
But it's in that pit where I have had some sweet moments with the Lord. I'll write more about those later, but I find this C.S. Lewis quote to be beautifully and painfully true:
"Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains."
God is shouting in these milestones - both missed and actual, and He has graciously given me ears to hear.
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