6 months.

It's been 6 months since this beautiful girl graced us with her presence for a few hours on this earth. 

It feels like a thousand years ago.  It feels like yesterday.  

It hurts. It's painful.  It's sad. It's beautiful. 

  It feels hard.  It feels terrible.  It feels normal. 

I am full of grief.  I am full of sorrow.  I am full of peace.  I am full of love.

I am angry.  I am devastated.  I am hopeful.  I am grateful. 

Time stands still and time moves on.  

I feel so many things at any given time that it's so hard to describe the past 6 months. 

I can move forward and backwards all at once.  I want to hold on so tight to the past and move on to a hopeful future. 

 Life feels different.  Life feels normal.

It's hard and messy and many, many times I think, why me?

But it's turning out to be somewhat lovely and painfully beautiful

because I continue to see Christ in all of it.

Psalm 139

O Lord, you have searched me and known me!

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from afar.

You search out my path and my lying down
    and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue,
    behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.

You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is high; I cannot attain it.

 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
    Or where shall I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
    If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 

 If I take the wings of the morning
    and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me. 

 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
    and the light about me be night,”

even the darkness is not dark to you;
    the night is bright as the day,
    for darkness is as light with you.

 For you formed my inward parts;
    you knitted me together in my mother's womb. 

 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
    my soul knows it very well. 

 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 

 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
    the days that were formed for me,
    when as yet there was none of them.

When you don't feel thankful.

The holidays are upon us.  Of course I've known they were coming and knew they wouldn't be what I expected them to be this year.  You see, ever since January 14th - the day we found out that I was pregnant with Nora - I've been excited for this holiday.  We moved into our house right after Christmas last year.  And after 5 moves since coming to Tennessee I was excited to be settled and very much excited to spend the 2013 holidays in our new home with our 2 precious children.

Then Nora died.

Now it's almost Thanksgiving and every commercial is filled with Christmas songs and the stores are decked out.  I read everyday what everyone is thankful for this month and the truth is that I don't feel thankful this year.   I'd say I've been doing OK for a good little while.  But as the Thanksgiving holiday creeps up I find myself caught under a wave of grief.  My heart feels broken and very empty right now.  Tears have been streaming down my face for days and I can't seem to come up for air or I just don't want to. I want to hide and wait out all the "thankfulness" going on around me. 

I decided to ask for wisdom from an older woman I know.  She said this to me:

"The "trick" to thankfulness is being thankful even when you do not "feel" thankful or like anything about your life or what is happening in your life.  It becomes ...being thankful BY FAITH.  The same way in which you walk by your faith....you become thankful by your faith.  You are looking not to what is seen but to what is unseen."

So this year I am trying to be thankful BY FAITH knowing that it is the Lord's will for me so HE will empower me. 

I am looking to what is unseen and I am thankful for 33 weeks and just under 4 hours with Nora. I am thankful for my sweet husband and my precious boy.
I am thankful for Jesus always meeting me where I am and giving me the grace to go on.

via

new normal.

Two weeks ago we went down to Nora's grave for the first time since we buried her.  We buried her in South Carolina at my grandmother's church cemetery where some other family members are buried.

I was excited to finally visit the grave.  I know that she isn't there.  I know that she is in heaven.
But the grave is just a place for us to go to remember her, to feel close, to bring healing.

And we also wanted to take Coleman there. 

Cole and I went to buy flowers to take to her grave.  He said he needed the blue flowers for her so yes we bought the died blue daisies and had blue die all over our hands.

We had ordered Nora's gravestone a few weeks prior to the visit and they put it in the same day we were headed down.  I was excited!    For some reason excitement over a gravestone and being in a cemetery seem very normal to me.  I guess it's part of my new normal.  Before Nora I would have thought it to be weird emotions.  I would get nervous being in a cemetery.  It's funny how things change, 
We enjoyed time together in the cemetery as a family.  Cole played at the grave and we just sat.
 It was good.  It was healing.