It's a Forever Journey

I think this might be the longest I've ever gone in between blog posts.

It's not that I have nothing to say.  I have all sorts of things that come to mind, that pull at my heart...

I just haven't had the words.

I want to share the daily ways that God reminds me that He is still with me and that she is safe with him.  There are many.

I want to share the struggles of year 4... the way grief still hits me out of nowhere... the sadness I feel when I look in her younger brothers' eyes and wonder about her.  Or the heaviness in my heart when I'm in a group of people who insist I only have 5 kids.  I want to share about the huge gift it is to my heart every time someone says I have 6 children without me having to correct them.

I want to tell you about my very tangible God who still makes times and places fit together in ways that only He could do and how that builds my faith.

I want to share how deep and unending my yearning for heaven is since she's been gone.

But somehow my days feel long and yet fly by.  These guys keep me amazingly busy and before I know it, I look at the clock and it's after midnight again.

I put off writing because quite frankly, I don't know how to do it quickly.  My blog posts have always been where I have worked through my thoughts and pain to a place of surrender and reliance on God.  Like the Psalms...

It's not something I can do in just a few minutes.  But tonight, to make it realistic for me, I wanted to take just a few minutes and just write.  To break the silence and get my fingers moving again.

It's been 3 years and almost 4 months - and while I'm not even sure you call what I'm going through 'grief' anymore, whatever it is is still here... I don't feel like I'm 'grieving' necessarily, but I just know it's not over - it's not my past - and I am positive it never will be.  I'm also completely okay with that.  I will be going about life and feeling like I have made it past the hard part and then it will hit me out of nowhere.  So while I cry less often, when I do cry, I cry much harder.

I do feel myself feeling a little more ready to be around people and talk about surface things, which for years I have had absolutely no patience for.  I would all but jump out of my skin trying to sit through a conversation on the weather type topics.  I am seeing some of my journey through all of this more clearly now and have had some conversations with God about the places that I messed up and what I should do to fix that.

And so I've made a lot of apologies and I'm sure I have many more to go... I'm thankful for the forgiveness I have been granted and I continue to work on forgiving where I need to as well.... that's a hard process for me.

On the other hand, I have also seen more clearly just how incredibly hard this has been and I am amazed that I have lived to tell about it.  Rachel was an amazing gift, but she really did come at a very high price for me and I am still completely confused why God chose me for this position.  Some days I honestly hope He will just take me home because I feel so overwhelmed and inadequate.  And as I write that, all I can think is... Jesus must have felt those same things ten fold.

And I guess I'll stop there because I can feel my mind starting to busy up and I can tell I'm about to change the course of this post.  Mostly, I just wanted to say that I am still here.  We're all doing pretty well.  I still miss her like CRAZY pretty close to every minute of the day.  And there is a ton going on in the Aube house that we could use some prayer for... so here is a little prayer list if you could remember to bring us to the foot of the cross....

- Rachel's Race is planned for Aug 2.  I have made a commitment to my family that this will NOT consume me this year.  There are many costs and I will be doing no pre race soliciting of funds.  PLEASE pray that God will bring a lot of participants and that He will bless my obedience to follow Him in how I am going about this race this year.  Pray for donations - both monetary and of items for the auction.  And most importantly, Pray that I will be a blessing to the other families who have lost babies who will participate in our baby remembrance ceremony.  The plans for this have been going through my mind non stop, I want this to be healing for my fellow baby loss friends.

- We have moved out half our our stuff to get our house ready for the market. We have a few finishing touches to do with painting and organizing (this place looks AWESOME!!)  but we are praying that God will bring a buyer and line something up for us to go to quickly.  We have no set plan, but are hopeful and trusting that God knows and we just need to take this next step.  Pray for my heart, as this is where I lived with Rachel dancing around in me - it's very emotional for me.

- Continue to pray for my niece Jailyn and her mom (my sister) Meagan - as well as my mom Rachel who they are living with.  Jay has come very far but this is a very long and difficult road.  My heart has been so sad for her lately.  Pray that she will get use of her left arm back and for her heart as she gets back into school.  We are praising God that we will get to see her turn 10 soon.  So thankful she is still with us.

- And please pray for my friend Kaitlin as she prepares to meet her little boy who has acrania (similar to anencephaly) and isn't expected to live long after birth.  We have been blessed with 4 of us in this little area who all have had babies with either anencephaly or acrania and have had a few times of sweet fellowship together.  It's sad to me that this happens at all, scary that it happens so often when I never even knew it existed, but so thankful that God has given us each other.  There is nothing like having surface conversation with people and *knowing* that even though you are talking about the weather, each one is thinking about their baby and at any moment if I want to yell out her name, they would all smile and understand.... they might even follow my lead.

Because that is just the way it is.... it's a forever journey.