Today we celebrated a sweet friends 60th birthday!

  I loved every minute of our time with them and yet found myself feeling just a bit sad.  As I watched their family gather round the tables and eat.  I sat with my husband and daughter and watched from a distance.  These are people I have known for years and love but they aren't my family. 

They are my best friends family. They are wonderful and kind but not mine.  They are held together by the bond that only comes from blood and birth right.

When my mom passed my family kind of dissolved. Evie will never know what having a grandma is like. Summer sleep overs, special birthday lunches, just because I love you outings.  She will have Ron and I to do the best we can but there is something magical about a grandma.  This is what I saw today...

My beautiful god daughter sitting with her wonderful grandma and my heart playing tug of war.  Being pulled between happy, because it is a beautiful relationship and heartbroken because I desperately want that for my baby. 

Time does seem to soften loss and ease the immediate pains of a mama's passing but it never goes away and tonight my heart hurts. 

People always say you can create the family you want but that just isn't true. No matter how hard you try you are always going to just be a guest in their lives...not the blood.

 

Evalyn's 4th year in pictures

Evalyn Faith turned 5! 

Can't believe it's been 5 years since my sweet little girl joined our family.  Evie you bring such joy to our lives.  Your spirit is so full of God's love and joy that my heart is fuller because of it.  

Here are a few of my favorite pictures and moments from your 4th year.  I pray that this coming year is so much more...in every way.  

I love you!

I have a mom shaped hole in my heart...times two

    I have a mom shaped hole in my heart...times two.
I lost two amazing women last year and today I can't stop thinking about Diane's passing.
I happened two months after my mom died. I watched my daughter cry and my husband shut down and all I could do was live...barely.

I tip-toed through my days trying not to upset anyone. Trying to keep my head above water. Trying to just keep the tiniest smile on my girls face and the pain out of my loves eyes...I failed!

I failed in a fog.

I failed in pain.

I just simply failed!

It does get easier. It gets softer. It gets less {knife in the heart}, and yet...it still hurts and makes my eyes leak.

My sweet girl still talks of her grammers and her Gigi but I am learning to love it. The simplicity of a child's heart helps us all along.

Diane, I loved you and I didn't tell you often enough.
 til we meet again... 

i miss

I miss...

walking to the stop sign and back when the sun came out watching you talk about rocks with E, coffee dates in the middle of the day, phone calls when my heart was breaking or my mind was confused, knowing you were always there day or night, your advice always being the same...fight!, your smile that was so often laced with mischief, the smell of hay and shampoo when you walked into a room, your love of learning...and the joy in your eyes when you completed something new and difficult, the way you loved me like no one else, always and unconditionally,

I miss...

She needed glasses to see...(from Dear Evalyn)

Dear Evalyn, 

Oh sweet girl, we figured it all out this last month. You can't see with out glasses.  You function well but you don't really see! 

The wonder on your face as we fitted you with glasses was amazing.  You were really seeing the world for the first time.  

Trees and stars became full of excitement, riding your bike was easier, art...oh sweet art you seem to be devouring, coloring immediately improved, letter recognition...all of the things you tried were more fun and not such a challenge because you could see!

This was our first preemie related obstacle and you hurtled over it with leaps and bounds.  You took to those spectacles like you had never had anything different.  I have been so impressed by your wisdom and understanding of things lately.

Daddy and I have always talked to you like you were an adult and we didn't do anything different when it came to you wearing your glasses...we told you that you needed to wear them and so you did.  Easy Peasy!  

I love that when it's important you are so laid back. You never fight at the doctor, at the grocery store you follow directions, you don't run away from me, you stay right by the car when I tell you to and most importantly...you wear your glasses without argument...I love you for that!

(your box house we made together complete with door bell and window box full of flowers for spring)

Sweet Dreams baby girl, 

xoxo, Mama

written ages ago and benched as an idea...now is relevant again

Sometimes in life doors open when you least expect it and other times they open and literally suck you out so fast your head spins. I think I might be heading in the latter's direction. It seems like life changes daily for me.

Where to go when you are stressed and overwhelmed...HOME. For me this is wherever Ron is but lately I've been feeling the pull of my first home. My Farm. I keep making the decision to not move there knowing in my heart of hearts that it's not right and then something pushes me back there.

As my mom's health fails a bit she keeps mentioning me and my family moving home. This is not an ideal situation. I love my family but often that love gets in the way of making the best decisions for me. What my life needs not theirs. What my family needs...not them. What is going to be best for my husband and my daughter at the end of all of this.

On the one hand there is the opportunity to live on one of the most beautiful pieces of land around and such a better place for Evie to grow up. On the other hand...it would involve living with my parents again and the potential to live with my sister. I will never live with her again. She disowned me and that is where I'm leaving her. Disowned and discarded. I'm tired of being the one to forgive. I will never open my heart to the hurt that is Elle again. She is on her own. I will also never have Evie around her.

Big things to think about when I should be sleeping. So with that I must power down and try to let my brain absorb some of this before my little one wakes up.

Funny thing about benching thoughts to a draft for over a year...the sentiment is still the same. I've been constantly pulled towards Kaelies since moving out in my early 20's.  I came home for a brief stay after college and then left.  Since that time I've been thinking of being there again.  Dreaming of it really.  Being in the safety of those 20 acres.  Surrounded by the wind, coyote calls, smell of fresh cut grass and lady bugs. There are always lady bugs there and that is strangely comforting to me.  

I am going to continue to pray about where my family should be and what will be best for all of us. In the mean time I guess I'll just dream of wide open spaces and starry nights.  

Blessings, Ara

finding my father

She spent all of her adult life with this man. My father.  She loved him, hated them, played and fought with him.  Most of the time they were just together my whole life.  It was something that always just was.  They just were...and now, well they aren't.  

She graduated to heaven and left us behind.  Somehow we have to figure out how to be without her and there is some joy in this process.  A new relationship, a new friend.  A father who has always just BEEN now seems to really BE.

I loved her so much and now have to find my way to loving him as much.  

Thank you Lord for the opportunity.