Raw, Transparent, Me

Surreal, that's what I would describe today as being for us.  A year ago, I held Emerie as she took her last breathe on this Earth, around 10:00am in the morning.  Just as I had changed when she was born, I changed again when she died. Never again would life be the same again.  There was before Emerie, and now it was after Emerie.  My world came crashing down in that instant, my heart broke into a million pieces, and if it wasn't for Brandon and my mom, I think physically I would have fallen apart as well.  I have never cried so hard in my life, wailed so deeply that it hurt.  Everything I thought I knew, just faded away.  Even in the hours to come, of cleaning her, brushing her hair, holding her, kissing her, I was hoping that God would bring her back like He did Lazarus.  But He didn't.  (I'll save those thoughts for another blog.)  Leaving her little body there was probably the hardest thing I had to do, walk away, when everything ins...

There are three dates that I will blog about and on in August. These three dates drastically changed my life and Brandon's in a short amount of time. First date, today, August 4th. Emerie was born in the evening before 7pm.  She had finally come after patiently waiting for 9 full months; she was out, but things turned out not the way we wanted or planned.  This beautiful baby that we couldn't hold or stimulate was ours, but technically she was never ours.  Deep down inside, I knew she didn't belong to me, but to God her Creator. This didn't make the reality any easier as we saw that she was struggling to breathe and live on her own. This date, of course full of sadness, also represents a beautiful day.  The day we were able to lay eyes on Emerie, touch her, see her, feel her, smell her. She was perfect in every way, a priceless moment when we laid our eyes on what my body had grown. This day will forever be a beautiful sorrowful day because we got to meet her, an...