The fog has lifted, I wasn’t expecting it. No one warned me about this fog. It’s like getting the wind knocked out of me… again. Everything looks different, everything looks a little more clear. I think it was easier when it was foggy, when I could believe for just one second that maybe it didn’t really happen. I checked in with my mommy friends, the ones who are on the same journey and I told them how I felt and they all said “oh yeah that’s a real thing.”  The initial shock is wearing off and the grief will start to come in waves, for some it happens after 9 months some 15 months for me it was 6 months. 6 months and 12 days… without Eliza.

 I was traveling home from a work trip recently. It was really early and I boarded the plane, got my headphones in, wrapped myself in my sweater and I watched as the rest of the passengers squeezed through the aisle getting to their seats. A mom got on with her little boy, she was carrying him. He was probably 3 and I noticed his legs they were wrapped around his mom, he had little converse on and I immediately thought of Eliza, and her sweet little legs. I thought about how cute they were, and how they always had scrapes and bruises because of all the tumbles she took. How she never liked bandaids and even though I would buy the cutest ones I could find she immediately took them off. I thought about how she never cried when she fell, she always just got back up and kept moving. I thought about how she would put her hands up in the morning and say “up up” and I would pick her up and she would wrap her legs around me so tight…and the fog lifted. And then the tears started streaming down my face. I wanted to see her legs and I couldn’t. I wanted to feel them squeezing me around my waist and I couldn’t. It was like November 11th all over again. And the wave came but this one was more like a Tsunami. It knocked me over, it threw me around and it left me gasping for air.  

 All my writing about grief and joy and every feeling in between are like letters to myself, they remind me of what I have felt when things get a little blurry. I don’t want to forget anything, not one bit of this pain will be wasted because it reminds me how much I loved, it reminds me how God has seen me through so much. Everyday I miss something different about Eliza, kissing her face, brushing her hair feeding her breakfast, all of those things that we take for granted I miss so deeply. I wake up thinking about them and I go to sleep praying to dream of them. It is completely life altering suffering a traumatic loss it’s like all of my senses are heightened and I’m so much more aware of everything around me. The entire world looks different. I would have never noticed that little boy on the plane before, but that day I did… and it destroyed me. 

 I’ve said before that for the remainder of this life I will have one foot in heaven and one foot on earth…and just like those waves of grief  it makes it hard to keep my balance. Now I have to learn how to live on shaky ground. I pray for God to steady me, to help me find some solid earth and I am reminded of how Eliza was always off balance. It amazed every time Aaron would lift her high in the air just holding on to her feet, she never wavered. Eliza would straighten her sweet legs clap her hands or raise them in the air…and she would smile, she wasn’t scared, she completely trusted her dad that no matter what he would never let her fall. It is the perfect example of what I need to do, what we all need to do. Be brave, stand tall, never waver, be happy even when life leaves us a little shaky, smile when life gets hard, and trust that HE will never let us fall without picking us up. It seems so simple and if Eliza could do it shouldn’t I be able to do it?  

 I’m trying my sweet girl. I really am.

“Upward falling, spirit soaring, I touch the sky when my knees hit the ground” ~ Hillsong United