Imperfect.

December 4th, 2009 is quickly approaching. It seems like it keeps coming up in conversation for different reasons and I am ashamed that I have to think to myself, "December 4th...hmm...there is some significance to that date. What is it again?" Then I realize that it is my daughter's birthday. Oh, and it is painful because, as you know, she will not be present to celebrate. No candles. No singing. No birthday cake. I try to put off thinking about it until the date actually comes because somehow I always feel like I only have permission to grieve all over again on that actual day...as if I don't grieve her loss regularly.

One week from this upcoming Friday, on December 4th, it will be three years to the day that our precious Addie arrived by emergency c-section. I heard her cry for the first time from across the room, where she lay surrounded by a team of neonatology experts. It sounded like the tiniest kitten meowing for its mama. The doctor brought her to me, wrapped up with her little hat on, eyes wide open trying to take in the bright lights, in all her beautiful, beautiful glory. A tiny 4lbs worth of breathtaking sweetness, smelling of new baby. I didn't know then that she had red hair under her hat. I was only able to look at her for a few moments. I felt peaceful relief that she was here and she was safe. She was whisked away to be cared for by someone other than me. I did not know then, that we were in no way out of the woods or that my turn would come to care for her and it would be amazing. But it would end four months later.

I am shocked that it will be 3 years. She would be three years old.

Last week, I listened to a speaker discuss how she felt unusable to God after going through the difficult process of having a child diagnosed with autism. She said she felt "out of order." Feeling as if she was on the verge of a mental breakdown, she said she asked God if she would ever be able to be used by Him again. I cried as she spoke, realizing that was exactly how I have been feeling. It's been three years, God. Will I ever be fixed? Will I ever recover? Will I ever be the perfect mother and wife, who doesn't cry so regularly or feel so beaten down, but smiles and keeps everything in perfect order? Can you use me after so much has been broken and in disrepair for so many years?

Three years ago, I celebrated Thanksgiving with my family in my most comfortable maternity shirt, feeling my precious child dance inside my belly. I knew that day, that she would be born soon, but I could not have known how special that memory would be. It would be our only Thanksgiving together.

So this time of year, I feel nostalgic. Even though I am further from her in terms of time, this year I feel somehow more attached to those memories, and less confused. Yes. I am out of order. There are things that need to be worked out. There always will be. There is not a magic pill I can take that will make me better. I have lost a child and there are still many moments that I am taken over with grief. Those moments come often and without prior notice-in the car, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a church service, in the middle of a conversation (even with a stranger but more often with my sisters or my Mom). But I am realizing that many of the people that I meet who have the most depth and the most empathy are also in the state I am in; that of being or having been "out of order." So there is hope! Maybe I don't have to be made perfect. Maybe there is some sort of wholeness, or even beauty, in the pain and in the brokenness.

I am finding peace with what has happened and the person I have become, complete with my imperfections and even in my state of feeling out of order. In some ways, even my imperfections bear the fingerprints of my Creator, as He shapes me and molds me into that which He has created me to be. All these experiences in my past, the good, the bad and the painful are part of who I am. I feel much less apologetic about it. This Thanksgiving I am thankful for God's grace and love. He walked beside me through the birth and the death of my beautiful baby and He continues to use me. Even when I think I am out of order.

"Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message" So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him...Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand...Jeremiah 18:2-6