How our lives have changed! How God has surprised us! What joy He has brought us through the gift of our Anna! She is a God-given dream come true!
But, oh, the joy doesn't eliminate the sadness! Life is hard. It is full of pain and sorrow. Sometimes around every corner. There are things in your life that can be so hard to even talk about because the pain is that real, that difficult, that suffocating. For us, the biggest sorrow we face is watching our youngest son grow physically while seemingly leaving his brain behind. Forgive me for my poor writing attempt. His autism is more and more an aching grief that leaves a gaping hole in our souls.
I don't talk about it much to many people. I write about it hardly ever- I, who love to write, who love to pour out my heart in the written word- this is something too fresh, real, and raw for me to fully wrap all of my emotions around. Not yet. Perhaps one day. Perhaps someday I'll be ready to write it all down. God is working in my heart, and maybe one day, I can encourage other parents.
But not yet.
He's still working on me.
Looking at our circumstances, most people would have warned us not to have another child. "You've got enough on your plates!" they'd say! "What are you crazy?!" they'd warn. We did get a bit of that, perhaps not in those same words, or perhaps it was said in what wasn't said at all, just an empty silence.
Thankfully, Brian and I don't listen to the voices of the world. God was tugging on our hearts for so long... we simply could not ignore Him any more. And one by one, He crossed off our list of concerns.
A few nights ago, while trying to get Anna to sleep, she fell asleep on my shoulder. She's getting nearly past that point. She falls asleep on me nursing all the time, but falling asleep on my shoulder is getting to be few and far between. I held her; I was in no hurry to part company. I snuggled that baby against me, looked up to the ceiling, and I thanked God for her. I prayed for her to know Jesus. And I savored every moment of my adorably sweet and soft baby girl curled up against me, knowing that if I blinked my eyes, she'd be eighteen. Brian needed me to check an assignment he was virtually sending out to his students, and he kept peeking in on me, wondering why I was taking so long getting Anna down. When I finally came out, I had to tell him that all the older generation ever says to us is that it goes too quickly. This business of raising children- it goes too fast. Never too slow. And so I held on, trying to freeze the moment in my mind, so when I'm an old lady sitting on my front porch, I'll remember it.
And in the words of Laura Ingalls Wilder, that I've never forgotten and have both haunted and comforted me since I was a little girl, "Now is now. It can never be a long time ago."
Because I lingered, because I savored, I know that that is now true.
Anna is wearing a crocheted blanket/shawl/wrap type thing that I wore as a baby to my christening. While I am no longer Catholic, I wanted a picture of my baby girl in the wrap that was handmade for me and that I wore once upon a time. I will give it to Anna to pass it down as well.
