(Written throughout the first week and a half of November)
With Opal’s first birthday approaching, my memory banks were flooded with what was happening just one year prior. The night before her November 1st due date, we had gone out to eat at Maggiano’s, and I ordered Eggplant Parmesan in hopes that the rumors were true about it helping to start labor. We wanted so badly to meet our girl!
My thoughts about all of the hope and anticipation I felt just twelve months ago brought with them a heavy load of grief, the really deep excruciating kind that I haven’t felt in quite a while. There was a whirlwind of emotions that came along with thinking about the purity of my hope and eagerness to meet my daughter at this time just one year ago. There was not an ounce of grief in me just one year ago. Just confident expectation.
Days later, however, we were absolutely slammed by the impossible news that she had already gone to Heaven. There was nothing that could have prepared me for the drastic shift from hope to devastation that our hearts felt. Just days earlier, there was no reason for me to be feeling anything other than pure hope and joy at the thought of meeting her and letting her tiny little life transform mine and teach me a thousand things about God’s heart that I never imagined learning from something so tiny and wonderful. At that point, I knew that any day now, my life would be forever changed by this girl, by my Opal Joy.
Sometimes I see parents post beautiful, sentimental things on Facebook when their child turns ONE about everything that child has taught them throughout that baby’s first year of life, and their first year of parenthood. Although Opal’s first birthday is not how I imagined it would be, I still have so much to celebrate about her and about how she has made me a better Mommy, and a better person all around.
I have been forever marked and completely changed by that 8lb 11.5oz bundle of wonderful. All she did was grow. She didn’t earn any of the love I feel so deeply for her. She didn’t make good grades or perform really well at a recital or behave really well. She just grew in my womb. And that’s all it took for me to fall head over heels in love with everything about her. I will never be the same because she is the one who made me a Mommy, and she is the one who awakened my heart to the immense love that only a daughter can awaken.
Because of Opal, my life has been forever changed.
Because of Opal, I have decided to dive into living holistically. She’s inspired me to pursue health so that her brothers and sisters and their children will not have to face the challenges that I have, and overcome what I’m in the process of overcoming. Because Opal is my daughter and I am her Mommy, I now care deeply about eating real whole foods, preferably organic, making my own beauty and cleaning products, reducing toxins in my diet and my environment, organic gardening (though I have a LOT of room to grow in this area), reducing stress in my life, and researching practically everything and knowing what I’m getting myself and my family into before making decisions. My girl is my motivation. She has taught me how my choices today affect my children and their inheritance.
Because of Opal, I have decided to become a doula and serve other Mommies through the most beautiful life-changing experience that childbirth is for women. I want babies to have the best possible beginning to their lives. I want to love and support mommies, believe in them, and bring peace and hope to the delivery room, so that they can look back on their birth experiences fondly, like I do of my experience bringing Opal into the world. My doula helped make it a beautiful thing. She believed in me and in Opal. She mothered me as Opal’s mother. I want to do the same for other women. My doula and my daughter are my motivation. I am now fascinated with childbirth, and the strength and power within a woman because Opal called out that strength in me. I feel like I could do anything because of her.
Because of Opal, my faith is deeper, wider, richer. Faith has become more than just jumping at the sound of God’s voice, and knowing He will be the Author of the unknown adventure ahead. It’s more than just what it takes to bring the sick into wholeness, and the dead into life again. It is all of those things, but it’s more. I now can say with full confidence that in all things, God is so very good and so wonderfully faithful. No matter what happens in my life, I know this to be true because I’ve experienced it. It’s not some theological truth that I’m trying to cognitively understand. His goodness, His nearness, and His comfort are things that I’ve touched and felt deeply in the depths of my sorrow. I’ve seen the tears He cries with His hurting Bride, His beloved daughter who lost her firstborn treasure. And I’ve seen the way He collects my own tears. Not a one will be wasted – not a one. Opal has been so richly a part of the deepening of my faith. She is wrapped up in the testimony of God being near to my broken heart, and in the way I’ve experienced His nearness as my good. (Psalm 34:18 and Psalm 73:28)
Because of Opal, my own destiny has become fuller and more complete. I now carry the seeds of who she is – seeds of JOY, friendship, dancing, laughter, and life – within myself as a gift to the world. And our Opal Joy truly is a gift to the world. Even now and forever, the gift of her life will keep giving and giving and giving. She has marked her daddy and me, and I know her siblings will be marked, as well. We will all carry the gift of who she is everywhere we go. As she cheers us on in the great cloud of witnesses, we are also cheering for her, honored to be a part of her story.
So Happy Birthday sweet girl! I know you are getting the best party a girl could ask for, a forever long party with our forever Champion, Jesus! Can’t wait to join you!
Mommy loves you!
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXXOXOXOXOXOXOX
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