A special note

I have not received today's Daily Dose from Hope's Mommy & Daddy so I figured I would take a few minutes to write about some other things. Hopefully I don't overextend my literary bounds.

Today is a very important day in our lives. It was one year ago today that Andrew & Sarah lost their first child at 21ish weeks. At the time it was, and still is in a lot of ways, devastating. I can't begin to imagine what Andrew & Sarah were going through. I was trying to figure everything out and asking why this had to happen to them? They had been married for 8 years, they waited until they were in a place in their lives where they could provide for a family, they had moved back to the Midwest, close to family, Sarah was working from home, every thing was in place, everything was perfect. I just couldn't understand how they could do everything so right and then have their unborn child taken from them without explanation. Well.... God doesn't always give us explanations when we demand them.

A few months later, great news! Sarah was pregnant again! And this time they were going to the doctors frequently and the specialists regularly to make sure this pregnancy would go "normally" and this baby would be perfect. Again, they did everything right. They planned for everything and followed all the instructions. Then in November all the sudden Sarah was on bedrest. Then just a few weeks later I got a call late in the night congratulating me, Aunt Em. I had been woken from a sleep and I was confused. I started crying because I was so happy, but then I realized that something wasn't right. Wait!! It isn't time yet!!! She can't be born yet, she still has to grow!! For all of us it was such a trying night, while we sorted things out, tried to find information and tried to figure out where to go from here. I didn't know her name, but I got in the car the next morning (after I responsibly took a final exam) and drove over to see her, to meet my niece for the first time! On the way there they told me her name: Hope Vivian. It was so beautiful to hear her name and it was so amazing to see her. She was so little but we all knew she was a fighter, and we have all seen just how much of a fighter she is.

A year ago I was asking: why them? What did they do wrong? Today, I'm saying thank you. Thank you for giving Andrew & Sarah and our family another chance. Everything happens for a reason. Yes, it may be cliche but it is a phrase that throughout my life I have learned to live by. I still don't know exactly why things happened the way they did on May 11th, but I do know that if God hadn't taken my little nephew to be with Him before he was born, before he could live on his own, we would never have met Hope. We would never have grown closer (in a special way) as a family. Did I mention we wouldn't have Hope?

While a year ago we mourned a loss, today I am celebrating a beautiful life that has changed my life forever. I still don't know exactly why things happened and I probably never will have an exact answer, but if I had to make an educated guess I would say it all happened for Hope.


A quote from Vaclav Havel that I have learned to love:

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.