It's What You See

It always happens late at night when I should be sleeping.  When I am tired and prone to emotional outbursts {i.e. breaking down in tears}.  But, it seems to be at the moment that I most need it to realize how very blessed I am.

A couple of years ago my sister turned me on to a blog written by Angie Smith.  I have mentioned her before on here.  She is the wife of Todd Smith who sings in the Christian band, Selah.  They have five daughters, one of which went to be with Jesus merely hours after she was born {her name, Audrey Caroline}.  They knew that would happen as they were warned, but Angie carried her to full-term, had a c-section and then watched her take her first and final breaths surrounded by family and friends.

From there I have stumbled on to other blogs that started out much as Angie's blog started.  A place to hope, a place to grieve, a place to heal, and then eventually a place to move on {as much as one can after the loss of a child}.  Their stories are all different and yet the same.  I am drawn to these stories as a moth is to a flame.  There is the compassionate side of me that weeps right along with these mommas, only able to imagine their pain.  Then there is the other side of me that whispers, "thank you, God, that it's not me".  Maybe that is selfish of me, but their loss makes me {even more} aware of how very blessed I am and how much I have to be thankful for.  And honestly, with all the moping around I've been doing the past several weeks, it was about time for a wake-up call!

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." - Henry David Thoreau