Lately I’ve been trying to remember the weeks before Eliza went to heaven but it’s hard. If I knew I was going to need to remember I would have taken notes and more pictures and more videos, but those days were like any other.  I remember she had her first lollipop at the zoo, and I got to volunteer at her schools Halloween party. I remember the last picture I took of her was in front of our fence, on Election Day in her Vote Pizza tshirt. That’s the picture that crushes me, the one picture that makes me look away when I’m scrolling through my phone. The one picture that reminds me that in only a few short days I would have to live the rest of my life without Eliza.

 Four years, that’s all I got to have, I know I’ve said it before but it is so unfair. I’m sad, angry, jealous and I hate it. I hate everything about it. I hate that I’ll never get to see her first day of kindergarten, I will never get to see her lose her first tooth, I will never get to take her to get her ears pierced or plan her first trip to Disney World. It makes my head spin, it makes me close my eyes and pray that when I open them everything will be different…but it never works, nothing works. There is nothing worse, I know that for sure.

 So will this be my life now, a series of memories I’ll never have? A life full of “what would she be like now?” I wonder if this is all I will ever write about because right now I can’t imagine writing about anything else. Will I always look at four year old little girls and cry because I don’t have mine. I try to find the silver lining, make lemonade out of lemons… but I just can’t. I made too many promises I couldn’t keep, promises like “I’ll take care of you as long as I live” and “I will never let anything happen to you”. Eliza never even knew I made her those promises but I know and they are broken and so am I. 

 I look at the road ahead and it seems too long and too hard. Somedays I am completely consumed with “what my life will look like in a year, in five years in twenty years” because where I am now is not at all where I thought I would be. 

 Thankfully If I’ve learned anything over the last nine months I’ve learned to hear Gods voice. I hear it when I am quiet and when I am desperately searching for answers. It’s not a loud booming voice, it’s a thought or song that I hear while I’m driving. Or sometimes its a text from a friend that comes at exactly the right time and says exactly what I need to hear. But this time I was in the middle of spin class. It was dark, I was sweating and struggling to get through the song Hard Love by Needtobreathe and the same verse kept replaying in my head, {there’s a reason that the road is long it takes some time to make your courage strong} I immediately thought of my courageous girl. The definition of courage is the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.  Eliza faced so much, heart surgery, seizures, special diets, lots of falls and hospital visits. Eliza didn’t need time to make her courage strong, she was born with courage, so much more than I will ever have. She never had to learn that…and her road was short, too short.

 All of this made me so emotional. I started thinking of my sweetest girl holding her fingers out in the middle of the night to have her blood tested and not even flinching or saying “Thank You” to the IV team that would have to come place IV’s in her feet when she ran out of veins in her arms. I thought of how I wasn’t able to take any of that from her, I thought of all my broken promises and in the middle of my heartbreak I said these words

 Gods promises cannot be broken… 

 Eliza is whole, she is surrounded by love. She is talking and singing and laughing. She isn’t sad, she isn’t hurting, and as much as I want her here with me, to do all the things I promised, I know she is in the safest most amazing place.

 and THAT is where my hope is. 

“You know the situation can’t be right, and all you ever do is fight. But theres a reason that the road is long. It takes some time to make your courage strong”~ Needtobreathe