One Beautiful Life

Bring on the New Year.

New Year's Day arrives like a newborn into the world where hopes and dreams, expectations, and fears are anxiously waiting. What is it about the new year that inspires us to change?

In my opinion (and we know that weighs very little), I think the answer is because it brings new opportunity. Opportunity to be better, opportunity to be more, opportunity to grow, opportunity for something exciting, opportunity for happiness, and opportunity to start fresh are all wonderful things. We greet the New Year with great eagerness, wonder, and hope... waiting and looking for opportunity.

So this year, I too, am greeting the New Year with great hopes... Hopes for Abby's health to be blessed and protected, hopes for my marriage to continue to grow and bloom, hopes for a second child to arrive on the wings of a very tired stork or jetliner, hopes to continue to simplify my life, hopes to take better care of myself, hopes to find joy in the every day moments, hopes to grow closer to God and know Him more.

Our New Year is off to a wonderful start as Abby is now 10 + 1 (11) nights seizure free. Every morning I awake with a bigger sense of joy and thankfulness than the day before as that number continues to grow.

I realized last night, as I was reading "Walking with God", by John Eldridge, that it is a very heavy thing to carry the weight of a very sick child on your shoulders each day. And as hard as I try to keep it before the Lord and off my shoulders, the Mother in me runs back and takes it back so very often. The knowledge alone of knowing that the bottom can fall out any moment has changed who I am as a person. I try to "remain in the day" and "take one day at a time" and I am better at that sometimes than at others. Before that knowledge, I was a lighter person, a more optimistic person, a happier person (not that I was happier before Abby... please do not read into that)... but even now my happiness seems to be waiting for the catch... for the "but".. for the "and now".

The happiness I have now is shadowed by fear. There, I said it, fear. And I know that fear does not come from the Lord. I realized last night that I am bound by fear. Fear of things going wrong, fear of seizures, fear of them gaining momentum and taking her from me, fear of not doing enough, fear of not being enough, fear of doing something wrong... fear of losing Abby. We were so close to losing her in 2004. Standing at the edge has never left me. Each time the seizures start to gain on her, I feel the hole behind the edge grows and deepens. I feel the edge is there in the darkness and we are just dancing around it, able to fall in at any misstepped moment.

And even though I rejoice in what God has done for her, and even though I Praise Him for what He continues to do for her each day, even though I believe in His love AND His sovereignty, I realized last night that I am bound by fear... I have tried to run from it, busy it out of my soul, believe my way around it, deny it even... but it is there and it has gripped me and stolen much from me and my family.

So after such bearing of soul, I sum up to say that it is my resolve this year, this month, this day, this moment to break the stronghold that fear has around me and to be very aware when it is thrown at me or more so whispered into my soul as an attack. And I am going to try and find myself again... my true self... my God reflecting self... my fearless self... and give her back to myself, my family and my friends.