Happy Birthday Lizzie

My dearest Lizzie, ten years ago, you were born…

and oh how I rejoice.

Eight years ago we brought you home…

and oh how I am thankful.

Your life did not begin with the comfort, the security and the love that it was meant to but I am thankful to the brave woman who chose to give you life and I am thankful to the One who chose to give you to me!

I look at your beautiful face now and yearn, with an intense, breath-taking type of yearning, to have been able to look into that precious face 10 years ago…

but I trust, with an intense, breath-taking type of trust, the One who was there with you, holding you, loving you and gazing into that beautiful face when I could not…

I am thankful for the heart glimpses that He gave me as I waited and the heart glimpses that He still gifts to me as we struggle to make up for the 2 years that we missed with you, as we understand the enormity of that missing and as we begin to understand our inability to “make up” for anything...

but from all of this we also begin to understand the Lord’s ability to heal and the Lord’s ability to use the hurt and the broken-ness to connect us as we are all broken and we all have hurts…

and we are connected my darling, you and I, we are connected in a way that only the Lord could orchestrate.

I remain in a state of awe and wonder as the Lord bridges that gap, that chasm that grew from circumstances and distance and deep heart hurts.

Most days, I have to remind myself that your beginning was not with me…

as the chasm continues to be filled, I have to stop and step into a consciousness that my heart does not want to enter, that enormity of missing that formed your hurts that first 2 years.

I have to remind myself as the Lord so beautifully weaves you into my heart…

I have to remind myself…

but you don’t…

you remember and those conscious steps into your reality become vital.

Sweet baby girl, as we celebrate your birth, your beginning and your beginning with us…

I remind myself…

I give my grief to the Lord...

and I rejoice…

I rejoice in the gift that we were given so many years ago…

on that day when our hurts collided and we became mother and daughter, forever minus two years... but forever all the same.

Sweet girl, the Lord breathed you into my heart, just as my heart began to be defined.

Trust in His plans for you my darling as it was that intense, breath-taking trust that opened my heart to the beautiful journey that lay ahead, the journey that began with you!

Happy birthday to my precious Lizzie!