Especially this year, when the daffodils bloom we will enjoy their beauty. I enjoy them every year but for reasons perhaps not always embraced by the heart. Today I will go and buy a bunch, or a plant or both. Today is one of those memory dates that one never forgets. When the kids were little, we had a party with cake and sometimes balloons. When Addlea was little she would release the balloons so her baby brother had something to play with in heaven. I guess she thought God hadn’t thought about toys for tots. March 23 many years ago we held our son as he died. We knew he may not be born alive or live for any amount of time after he was born, so being born alive was an awesome experience. It’s kind of odd to say that, but for us it was a huge answer to prayer. I simply asked God to give us something to love and he gave me a beautiful angel to hold for a couple hours before taking him back to heaven. Our second child was developing without bladder and kidneys which then affected how everything else in his body grew. They called it Potters Sequence: we learned way more than we wanted to know.
So March 23, though an awkward day in some ways has become a joy. Partially because it’s not my choice to give life or take life; that’s totally Gods. For me it would be arrogant to think that I should get all the wonderful things in life without needing an umbrella for a few rainy days. How self centered of me to think that God would only give me what I want: I never did that for my children so why would God treat me any different? God allowed me 8 months to carry a being and be “Jesus” to someone we would never get to know. To love, to protect, to sing to, to talk about and then to hand back; those things are simply pulling the wagon that God placed the handle in my hand. And interestingly enough, when God gives you a wagon to pull, he also gives you the strength to pull it and the wisdom to know where to pull it to.
I learned a few lessons that I still remember 27 years later. I can’t find my phone, can’t remember where my wallet is or where I hid the gift I bought someone so they wouldn’t see it, but this I will never forget. And when I see daffodils, it brings it a back, in a really neat way. My sister sent my daffodils when Normi was born and died. I planted them the next year and every year I plant more. I am not much of a gardener so perennials are the plants that have a chance to live in my world. Every year, depending on the winter, I get to relive a blessing. When I see the beauty of daffodils, I may shed a tear, but I see so much more. Daffodils are God reminding me words he put in my heart standing in the elevator at Methodist Hospital that changed how I thought of God and radically changed my faith walk forever.
I have been able to sit and talk to young moms who are walking where I walked. At those points of time, they think they can’t imagine going on. I did. I went on. I pulled the wagon. For them, although the circumstances are never the same, I looked normal and was living life. ( Please no comments about the normal part). For a heartbroken young mom, knowing someone else got through those trying times is a big part of moving on. And please don’t ever tell anyone you know what they are going through, because you don’t. Every circumstance is unique as us people who walk through them dragging our wagons through the mud.
So today I will decorate the house with the beauty of the daffodils. Baihley has already figured out how she and Hannah will make a cake. We will make the crazy 7 minute frosting, and lick the bowl and enjoy it; every bite! I will celebrate the ways God walked me through the mud, cleaned off the dried mud on my wagon wheels and kept my focus on what He did rather what what I lost. And I didn’t really lose anything. We say that, ” I lost a child”, or ” I lost my mother”; they aren’t lost. God has them right where they are supposed to be. We are just not in the right place to find them.
The sun is out and it’s a beautiful day here in Minnesota. For us, that’s the end of a really hard, cold, snowy winter. People are smiling. Snow is melting. Daffodils will begin pushing their heads out of the cold ground. And when they do, I will have the chance all over again to tell God how thankful I am for the chance to be right where He placed me so many years ago. And the daffodils, they are just beautiful.
Special Touch Ministry 