Part of your world

Two weekends ago, we walked in the Epilepsy 5k.  It was a tradition we started last year roughly a month after Audrey passed.  We had a large party memorializing Audrey and in support of her cousin.  We broke into groups.  I stayed with Hannah who was in the middle of the pack.  As we were trying to keep a consistent pace, I asked Hannah if she wanted to listen to Disney Princess music as it was Audrey's favorite.  Last year, I played Disney Princess music in memory of Audrey, and I was running ahead of the group.  I broke down into tears as I was running last year.  So, immediately, I thought it wasn't my best idea.  But Hannah said "yes," so the playlist played.  And the first song was "Part of your world" from the the Little Mermaid.


And I overthought it, like I do everything with Audrey.  Obviously, I immediately wanted to be with Audrey in her world.  Was that world a heaven that included princess castles and Disney Plus running 24 hours a day? I don't know.  I wish I knew what her world is like.  I pray every night to know her world.  But as we were celebrating post walk (we took a few short cuts so didn't quite make a 5k), I was thinking about the reason why we were there.  We were there for Audrey.  Not because Audrey was Epileptic, but because she had epilepsy.  Epilepsy was a part of her world, but it did not totally define her.

Today, Hannah, Amanda, my dad and I volunteered at the Superhero Center for Autism's Resource Fair.  I have been on the board of directors for the Superhero Center for 3 months.  I will be quite honest on my motivations to put time and effort into the Superhero Center.  I do it for Audrey.  I do it because the center was so good for her, it is good for Hannah, and it supports Audrey's friends from ABA.  If anybody is ever so inclined, you can volunteer for the Superhero Center.  You would make my day in the short term, but Audrey and her friends' life in the long term.  Much like before, Audrey wasn't Autistic, she had Autism.

As Google, Amazon, and Apple continue to spy on us, I was given a suggestion to buy a book called "31 Prayers for my Daughter."  Amazon must have known to give me that suggestion, because I have had a much more robust prayer life in the past year.  I wasn't the most consistent about praying daily, mostly because other things seemed more important than praying daily, or it was easy to push it off because going to sleep or watching Netflix seemed more immediate at the time.  Losing a child made it much more urgent to pray nightly for reasons pretty clear to a parent who longs to embrace his daughter in heaven.  I have to thank Amanda for the insistence originally of praying nightly for our girls, and over time, it became practice and the norm.

So two nights ago, we read the first prayer: a Blessing for Her based off of Isaiah 54:13.    It was hard to read, as the first line was written as such: "Thank you for the gift of my daughter,"  I couldn't read "my daughter" because I have two daughters.  I replaced every other "my daughter" with "my daughters" plural.  Semantics matter.  I know that I am way more critical of any reading after losing Audrey.  Last week, at school, I eavesdropped on a conversation that how words are stated matters.  While I didn't speak up at the time, I agreed.

I later read Isaiah 54:13, and  I realized that the translation I was reading referred to "all your children."  The page long prayer was based on this single verse in Isaiah 54.  The prayer "a Blessing for Her" referred to "your daughter" verbatim in the singular five times and many more times referring to "her."

And that brings me to back to how words matter.  Audrey wasn't Epileptic, rather, she had Epilepsy.  Audrey wasn't Autistic, but she had Autism.  While I have one daughter on earth and one daughter in heaven, I will continue to say "my daughters" because words matter and I will always be thankful for the gift of my daughters.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The last first? Sometimes the second is harder than the first.

Image
I started writing this post on Monday July 15th after experiencing many firsts and seconds on as we approach the anniversary of Audrey leaving for heaven.   This post took me over three weeks to write.  I had to think about why it took so long and the truth is, I am not on the same calendar that I used to be. I knew the fourth of July was going to be hard.  Audrey loved the fourth.  On social media, Mandy posted pictures of Audrey enjoying all of her summer favorites.  From June 26th to July 4th, Mandy posted a different picture of Audrey's summer favorites.  Starting on July 1st, she posted a daily picture of Audrey loving the fourth of July. Those pictures meant a lot and meant a lot to see Audrey's loved ones interact and share summer memories.  When Mandy took Hannah to the bathroom, I looked to my phone to look at pictures of Audrey.  I was surprised when I found this picture. This picture made me smile for many reasons 1. It encapsulate...
Read more

It Doesn’t Get Any Easier (Amanda's)

Image
  When we first lost Audrey, people often said, or we read in grief books, how in child loss it doesn’t get any easier. There was always some variation of:  It’s hard to know what “it doesn’t really ever get any easier” means when you’re first in the throws of it though, and the shock is so intense. I’ve also come to understand that for me, personally, the shock has been profound and longer lasting than for some others. 15 months in, it’s still really hard for me to grasp most days that Audrey is gone, and that it’s permanent. But it truly isn’t any easier than it was in those first weeks. Which is really hard to fathom if you think about it- How can our world still be as rocked and shaken as it was then, how can this still be as painful and sad and traumatic as then?- Yet it still is. The sadness seems only to grow deeper and the fullness of missing all of who Audrey is continues to grow in our lives. Our family wasn’t complete before she came into our lives, and now we a...
Read more

(Amanda's) Disorganized Thoughts- Approaching One Year

Image
I can’t believe it’s almost been a year without Audrey. I’ve tried several times in the past year to write, but I can never quite put my thoughts together into anything coherent to share. Many of you that are closest to me have listened to me attempt to share about grief in the past year- I appreciate your patience and understanding as I ramble on, sometimes with emotion and sometimes without, tend to ruminate over the same thoughts again and again, and try to capture the ways that I am missing Audrey, which are so hard to convey into words. I find the sadness becoming heavier again as the anniversary approaches. I try to focus on what my faith says is true about where Audrey is now and about how God loves and holds her, but the sadness and trauma of the events replay often. The natural rhythms of events that recur annually feel like counting down this year, reliving and replaying our ‘last’ of whichever special time it was with Audrey, leading up to August 7 th -10 th , and what...
Read more