Thanksgiving and Rejoicing

Six years ago today, I held my beloved fourth daughter for the first time. Memorized the feel of her miniature hand in mine and the weight of her swaddled form in my arms. Marveled at the shock of dark hair, at rosy lips and a perfect scrunched baby nose. Six years ago today, we said goodbye.

God has taught me much in those six years. Mostly, lessons in the hope and assurance we have in eternity, that on my darkest days here, it is that hope that I am to cling to. There has come an acceptance that pain is real and God is real and God is good and therefore I can breathe today. And in the pain, in the breathing in and out for the last 2,191 days, there has been hope. One day, the pain will stop. One day, babies will no longer die and mothers will not purchase balloons for cemeteries. One day.

I assumed, in that hope, that God had taught me what I needed to learn. Tirzah’s brief life was, in part, to teach me a very practical lesson. My hope lies not in this world and what it has to offer, but in eternity. Yet this year, this birthday, has me feeling like there is still more for me to learn. For a reason I can’t fully know, I am still here. Six years ago God stilled Tirzah’s heart while quickening mine. And for six years, I’ve risen from bed each morning, focused on raising our other children and being a godly wife to my husband and loving and sharing the gospel with those that I am in relationship with. I am still alive and therefore God is still working in me.

So, as we remember in heartbreaking detail the day that would forever change our family, I feel God pushing me forward. Hoping in heaven was the first lesson, one that I desperately clawed at sometimes. Now comes part two. Reconciling that hope, that yearning for Jesus to come and the brokenness of this world to be made new, with the conviction that I am still here, my heart still beats, and therefore I must meet that with joy and thanksgiving, rejoicing always.

Therefore today, there is thanksgiving. Thanksgiving for our beautiful brown haired girl who brought more love and more heartbreak than I thought any day could hold. Thanksgiving for the conversations we’ve had with our children about heaven, and their continuous expectation of being reunited with their sister. Gratitude for the wrestling over a God that is good and does good, even when babies die, and the rest in that conviction over the last six years. Gratitude for the incomprehensible bond that exists between parents when a child is lost, and the grace that has found us clinging to one another in the storms of this life. And finally, for God Himself. I believe God does bless us, and He does want to bless us, but that blessing? It is GOD. HE is the blessing. And so we are blessed. And so we are thankful. And so we rejoice. Even today.