We are blessed...

Yesterday I was looking at infant urns. It's hard to look at urns as I feel my baby girl kicking inside me. I've started looking at urns and had to stop a few times now, but while looking, I'd always seem to end up at the same one. It's a little wooden box that says, "Sweet Baby Girl, You Are Loved" on it, and it has a place next to that for a picture. After looking at it a couple times, I also realized it played Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace was my Great Grammie's favourite song, and when I saw that, I felt like Grammie was telling me that Eden was going to be okay, that she would be there to scoop her up in her arms as soon as she gets to Heaven. God telling me this was the urn we were meant to have for her. I wish I could have bought it right then and there, but it was something we'd have to save for. I was thinking maybe we could get it by Christmas perhaps. 

Eden's Urn. It plays Amazing Grace. <3

I had posted about the urn on a forum that I'm a member of, and quickly received a message from another mama offering to get the urn for us, so we wouldn't have to worry about how we were going to save up for it. Her offer had me in tears of gratefulness, and I accepted her offer. After I responded to her, I received another message from another mama offering the same thing. I bawled like a baby because God is so good to us. Anytime I start to feel discouraged or things get in the way financially for what we want for Eden, He pulls through and uses someone to show us that He's still listening. I'm in awe that there are people out there who want to help complete strangers or someone they barely know. I'm in awe of the impact Eden is making on other people's lives. I feel like her life is making a difference, and it's giving people more compassion, and showing people what they truly have to be thankful for in life. We are thankful. This isn't the ideal situation, losing our daughter before she even gets to experience life, but we are still thankful that she is our daughter. We are thankful for the time God is giving us with her, we are thankful for being chosen as her parents, we are thankful for the peace and strength God continues to give to us, and we are thankful for the prayers, thoughts, and gifts people have blessed us with. Eden is a blessing, and her life has higher meaning than I ever could have imagined for her. 

If this was a normal pregnancy, nobody outside my small group of friends and family would know the name Eden Marie. I wanted nothing more than a normal, uneventful pregnancy with a beautifully healthy baby at the end. I wanted a perfectly normal little baby who would grow up and live a perfectly normal life, and long outlive me and James. I realize that wasn't God's plan for Eden. For some reason, Eden wasn't meant to live a normal life, or even a long life. But it would have been easy to have closed down, shut God out, and kept Eden's life to ourselves. I could be curled up on the couch everyday in sadness, angry with God, feeling completely alone, and not allowing my daughter's life to touch anyone else's, but that is not God's plan! He somehow saw a strength in me that I didn't think I had - He gave me this child knowing I wouldn't let her life be wasted. Even before I was born, He knew that I'd someday carry a child that would help change the world through her short life, a life that would touch my friends and my family and strangers all over the world. Every time I see my blog was shared on someone else's facebook, or on someone's blog, or on a forum, my heart is warmed, because Eden's life is meant to be shared! 

I see hundreds of people reading this blog everyday, and I wonder how many people this blog is helping. I wonder how many parents have received the same diagnosis and stumbled across my blog and saw a glimmer of hope - not hope of a cure, or a misdiagnosis - truthfully neither really exist (as desperately as I've looked for that kind of hope), but hope of peace, and of love, and the great blessing of carrying such a special child. Hope that happiness is possible through all of this, and it IS OKAY! I needed someone to remind me of that. That it is okay to be happy and continue enjoying my life despite our daughter's fate, and that it is normal to be happy at time and it's normal to be sad at times. A sweet, sweet lady who I've had the privilege of meeting through this path of anencephaly reminded me of that, and I needed to hear it. She had her son a couple months ago on June 2nd, a beautiful son, Gideon, who also had anencephaly. Her blog is inspiring, and her faith in God is strong. I'm completely honored to have found a friend in her, and she's able to give me the kind of support and understanding that most people can't.

Thank you all for your continued thoughts and prayers, and thank you for helping to share Eden's life with others. It truly means so much to us that her life is making a difference in this world.

"Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted." Matthew 5:4