Birthday

Dear Eli,

Your birthday is tomorrow.  You’d be six.  You’d be playing with your siblings and chasing and catching alligator lizards and snails.

It’s hard to believe you’d be six.  It’s flown by so quickly and it’s gone to slowly all at once.  You’d be right smack in the middle of it all if you were here.

We’ve been on the road now for 10 months.  You’ve been along with us too.  I couldn’t help but bring the urn and your memory box with us on this long journey.  If anything ever happened to it, I’d be really really sad.

I can’t help but smile when I think about how you would’ve ran with your brother and sisters at the Petrified Forest. Played on the rope each time Dad put it up at the different locations we’ve been at.  Grinned so big when we showed up at Legoland without the kids knowing.  Shot at Zurg with a venegence on the Buzz Lightyear ride at Disney World.  Loved and kissed and hugged on at the multiple friends and relatives we’ve seen.  Played right along with the P’s and the Luces.  Joined in on the pretend pirate ships and lava jumping.  Screaming with delight on the Technic Coaster.  Smiling at the birthdays of your siblings.  Laughing along with Daddy and the other kids at “Rio”.

It makes my heart warm.  Picturing in my minds eye.  What would you look like?  Like Josiah maybe.  Would you laugh like him too?  Laugh so hard you can’t breathe when some farts or burps too loud.  Would you guys push and shove and love each other so much and play Legos together?  He’d be a good Lego teacher.

It makes me sad too thinking about how much you’re missed.  How much we long to have our family complete.  How we long to be with you and to hold you and to love on you.  If I think too much about that, I can’t function.

Your short life has brought us down to the mire.  Into the pit and full of saddness and loss that for awhile we didn’t know if we’d get out of it.  But as time went on Jesus brought us out.  Your short life was full of Jesus and we’ve seen Jesus work here through it.  We’ve seen His glory through it.  We’d selfishly prefer you here, but you are safe.  You are free from pain.

I am grateful for you, my son.  I’m am grateful for the time we had with you.  To hold you.  To love on you.  I’m grateful for how our Sovereign Lord has used your life to make us broken and have mended hearts with scars.  I’m grateful that you are in Heaven and that you have friends there too, although selfishly us mammas would like our babies here, but as mammas crying together and loving one another we have sweet, strong frienships.  I’m grateful for how we were wrecked and how we’ve grown.  I thought for a long time that those words would never come.  But they did.  Slowly.

If you were here I’d throw you a party.  Maybe just our family, but we’d have a fun day.  If you were here I’d smother you with kisses.

The smothering will have to wait….

I love you.

Happy Happy Happy Birthday!

Love,

Mommy