So, it's my birthday.

And this morning, I just wanted to remember what it felt like that last year before the accident.  How precious, how adored, how loved I felt by each one of my children.  How wonderful it felt to wake up to smiling faces, happy birthday shouts from my little people, flowers on the counter, birthday presents piled high in the living room and anxious requests for me to "open your presents, Mommy!" And it wasn't about the presents, or the flowers, or the cards.  It was all about the 5 little smiling faces and the love they showered me with from the minute I stepped out of my bed.
Last year, we were so shell shocked that we spent my birthday driving to Maryland to get away for a few days and celebrate Eva's birthday with my family.  And I pretended like it didn't even exist.  Which was purely selfish on my part, since my kids wanted me to be excited just like they always are on birthdays.
But I simply couldn't wrap my brain around how to celebrate anything, let alone my birthday, without all my "gifts" surrounding me.
Because that is what my children were and are.  The most precious, cherished, honored, and incredible gifts I ever received.
And celebrating anything without ALL of them seems just so wrong.
But it's not. I know, somewhere in my rational mind, it's not.  I just wish the rational and irrational parts of my mind would stop fighting like twin 2 year olds over a bag of M & M's.

There's so much I don't remember anymore.  My brain seems intent on shutting out both the happy and the sad in some feeble attempt to keep my sanity.  Because that's what a daily battle with this grief is-it's a battle for my heart, my mind, my sanity, and my very soul.

Today, as much as I want to crawl into a hole and hide, away from the light and the reminders of how I still grow older but Mercy and Sam don't, I won't.

I've hidden from the light so much in the last 6 months, desperately seeking respite from the hurt and holes in my heart.

So I'm going to try hard, so very hard, to see the light, see the joy and feel blessed.  And for that I need you, ALL of you.  I need your prayers, your intercessions to the God who sees, who knows and who hears.  Please pray, for not just me, but especially for Charles, for Eva, Charley and Max.  The gifts who are still here with me, who need me, who love me and who look to me to learn how to survive life with THIS past, present, and future.

Can you do what I simply cannot right now?
For my birthday, will you gift my family with your prayers?  It is the most precious and fragrant offering-and I hope, will remind me of the grace, sovereignty and beauty of a God who will redeem this pain and restore the hope my family so desperately needs.

Return to your rest, my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.  

                                                                                                           Proverbs 116:7

By His Grace only and always,
clan mac mama