Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday Meredith! - my dearest and precious child….Today I miss you just

as much as I did 40 years ago as I held your warm, but limp body in my arms. All I

could see was my beautiful infant resting peacefully and so perfectly in every

way…so dainty, so fragile.

I begged God to please, please let you live so I could look into your eyes….I just

wanted a glimpse of your eyes so I could perhaps have seen the soul of who had

been entrusted to me from heaven.

God did not allow that to happen.

For nine months I had waited patiently and was so thrilled as your due date was

becoming close. I loved you from the moment I knew I was pregnant. You lived in

me, with me for a 9 month journey on earth. I felt so blessed and honored. There

was so much that I wanted to share with you, to teach you, to laugh about with

you…..God did not allow that to happen.

I left the hospital with empty arms and returned home to an empty crib….I placed

a picture of you in the crib and stared at you in a photo …empty arms, empty

heart. Everything was black and white. No more color in my life.

I felt destroyed internally as though I would never recover.

For months I drove to the cemetery and knelt at your grave placing new flowers

and taking away those that had died. Crying and lost to the deepest grief I had

ever faced. I talked to you and asked why, why did you leave me? I asked God why

it had to be me to lose this precious life that had brought me so much joy.

God did not answer me.

It has been a long 40 years without you my darling daughter and the only way I

made it through that darkness was to ask God for help. Instead of teaching you

and laughing with you, you my dear Meredith were my teacher. You taught me

the value in new life, how to be a better parent, how to use God as my strength

when I felt I had none. I have felt you with me every day of all 40 years and the

value in life that you provided me is immeasurable to what I could have ever

given to you.

You made me a better human being. A better and stronger soul.

And I can hear you silently beside me every step of the way cheering me along and

loving me, nudging me in the right direction when I waver, and doing the same

with your younger brother.

Grief is blinding. It blinded me from seeing initially that God had answered me.

He gave me such a wonderful opportunity to grow spiritually that others will

never know. Your birthday was a key to unlocking the better parts of myself.

God gave you a gift. The gift of living eternally in his house. And he gifted me

with my beautiful baby, Meredith Justine. You, on earth, would have been 40 years

old, but instead you are in heaven and 40 years young and eternal. A true angel. I

love you sweetheart. I love you forever and with every fiber of of my being.

Never forgotten…..You still live in me. You died only on paper the day you were

truly born….. Happy birthday, Meredith!

Happy birthday.