Today, I feel weary. I think I'm fighting something off in more ways than one. The burden of grief has been particularly heavy. When that happens I start to have trouble sorting through my thoughts. Time slows down and begins to drag.

Today was one of those days when the pain got so bad that I couldn't breathe. My chest feels compressed and so does my heart within it. The bittersweet that is so prevelant in everything I do now tastes more bitter than sweet, and smiling isn't so natural.

I don't think the twenty-something, chilled-to-the-bone weather helps. Mike mentioned that he'd like to curl up in a ball under a blanket and sleep for a long time. Sounds pretty good to me.

We both felt like curling in a little ball together after the service this morning. I know that Ron didn't mean the sermon to be sad; it was about our Savior, after all, but it was hard for us to swallow. It wasn't difficult only because Ron mentioned us by name and our daughter being the "baby who has already gone home to be with the Lord" (out of the 15 or 16 babies born in our church this year). Ron preached about Jesus coming to earth as a baby, and in his sermon he mentioned many sweet details of being a parent. He talked about how parents in biblical times carefully considered the name of their little ones because it was believed that the child would become their name. I couldn't help but think about how careful we were to give our Stella a great name even before she was born, a name she could live up to.

Stella did become her name. She became an extraordinary star, shining the way to Jesus in our lives. And hopefully, she's shining the way to Jesus in other people's lives because of the way she's changed us.

Not only was the sermon sad, but so was the special music, at least to me. "Mary Did You Know" has always been a song that causes me to think solemnly about Christ coming to earth. But, this year, it took on new meaning. "Mary, Did you know, that when you kiss your little baby, you kiss the face of God?" Of course I can't compare meeting our Stella to Mary meeting Jesus in baby form, but I feel like I can now understand just a small part of what Mary felt. It's as if I got to know God a little better after looking at my baby's face.

My mind doesn't always work in a linear way, so when I was listening to the sermon and to "Mary Did You Know," I thought of the song that has been in my head the whole week: Stellar Kart's "Born to Be." I thought about how as much as it hurts not to have our daughter here with it, that she was born to be a part of something holy. That we are all born to be part of something holy. This thought has giving me consolation today, a day that has seemed unbearable otherwise.
Stellar Kart
Born to Be

"We were born to be,
A part of something holy.
All of us are restless 'til we find.
We were born to be,
A part of something holy.
Bigger than, bigger than
Bigger than you and I.
Bigger than all our lives."

Please pray with us that our Stella's life and our lives will be part of something holy.