hardly picture perfect

it's been so long since i have written...i can tell by all the thoughts swimming in my head, jumbled together and crammed up against one another like bumper-to-bumper traffic that is has been way too long for decompression and sorting through my head like this, avoiding my thoughts is a mask for trying to avoid the obvious pain....it's been a hard week...i have been so up and down lately with my emotions and my thoughts, that getting them down here in words seemed too fleeting...because they would change within the hour or the day...and i felt like i couldn't commit to how i feel, even here...to anyone....

the holidays found me missing sydney greatly. something about the holidays just makes loss harder and more obvious. crowding relatives in a room, around a table, gathering gifts and cousins in matching jammies for a picture...it is so obvious that she is missing...that there is a hole in every picture, a chair missing at every table...a ballerina stocking not hung, a little body absent from the playground, gifts missing from the under the tree...maybe not obvious to others, but to me it is the HUGE elephant in the room...i wear her loss like a huge weight around my neck on a string....i feel like i carry it so i know how much it weighs, but since no one else carries it, how would they know the weight of this burden?

i feel strange...thoughts foggy and clouded...heart is aching and i try and cling to God's sovereignty in it all yet my human nature leads me always back to wanting my arms filled with her warm little body and sweet precious face....i mourned this last baby we lost..i still am, sad that i had hope and it was fleeting once again..something to look forward to, but it's gone...it was hard, yet i feel like the weight of syndey in my arms last november is what i am longing for today....i vacillate back and forth between who i miss and who i mourn..her and this last one...more than one? are you kidding me? really, God? isn't one enough? ok-ok, i know i am not to complain or argue with the Lord about His will...but this week has proved more for my mind than i can imagine...my heart feels quite void and numb so my head doesn't know what to do..so it just shuts down..and so do i...i told ian i feel like a stroke victim and can't put my thoughts together or form words very well..i feel like all is going on around me while i sit and watch on the other side of the mirrored wall..this Christmas seems eerily familiar to me, like last year...when we came to dallas for the holidays without her....

i got together pictures of the grandchildren for my mom this morning and i searched her house for the perfect frame...to fill in this year's pictures that are most current over some of the older ones....i found a frame that had four squares and my heart sunk. it was so obvious once again, that one little small square would be left void...no little teethy grin would fill that spot, no little messy brown haired little girl would flash her smile next to her brother's spot....nope-just three kids. my brother's two little girls and liam. just liam. i thought at first that i shouldn't put them there because it seemed empty...but at the same time i wanted to do it because i felt like i didn't want to deny that there once was four...could have been four at one time...wished it was four...

i crumbled on the floor in my mom's laundry room and cried, sobbed...for the first time in months...sad...then mad..back to lonely and missing her, then bitter that so many people have so much that they take for granted and i lay on the floor next to clothes lent and laundry detergent sobbing on my hands and knees, longing for my daughter....knowing that she is safe and sound and at peace but i am not....knowing the she knows no pain, but i am filled with it...so tired of this hole my heart....i let myself just "be" for a while and looked at the frame again, wondering what her 2008 picture at one years old might look like...wondering what this child that we just lost might have looked like, wondering at the end of it all if we will ever have a picture to place in that frame to complete the rest of the whole picture....four cousins, one more grandkid...a sibling for liam....how long? how long must we wait to see that fulfilled? maybe soon, maybe longer, maybe never? we are promised nothing. we deserve nothing. i was humbled. i dried my eyes and got up and carried on...a year ago, my mom was holding me in my bed as we sobbed..literally holding me up as i went limp in her arms and couldn't breathe...i couldn't just carry on like i did today a year ago...my mom told me she heard recently that maybe with grief that the pain doesn't go away, we just get stronger to deal with it...i like to think of it that way...i sure didn't feel strong on the laundry room floor but i did "bounce back" faster than a year ago...i gathered myself together and knew that God's Grace and Mercy would have to be enough...and it is, it will be...

liam is playing with his grampa right now...i hear him crawling under the cardboard box tower-castle-complex liam and his gram made out of duct tape and christmas wrapping paper and markers....his voice is always calling me out of what-if land and back to reality...it beckons me back to a place of the here and now where i know i need to live...where it hurts to live, but it is worth it...i call on Grace to keep knowing the difference and Mercy to help ease the pain.....

and i am grateful to write again, to put down my thoughts again here..in the most honest way i know how...whether it is pleasing or uplifting or just downright depressing, it is what it is...today is a hard day. tomorrow is a new day and i am thankful for new mercies every morning...but today, well...i am just doing the best i can......