A gap to stand in.

Branson would have been 5 months old today.  She would already have a personality....likes and dislikes....preferences.  

Lately, I have not really been able to picture her as a baby. I have never really been able to "see" her in the stages she would have been. She remains the perfect, sweet baby that I held.  I picture her in the arms of my Daddy in heaven, resting under his chin....or nestled in a baby quilt in the arms of my Grannie.  I have no theology to back up my "baby image" of her...she may very well have the perfect body of an adult.....it is just the way she is in my mind at this moment....my heaven is full- a place I long to be. 

While on this earth, however, I am enjoying the blessings He is bringing daily- His mercies are new...every hour, I am finding.  

I have recently been asking Him some simple questions.....

Am I meant to mother another baby?

Will Branson's life be shadowed by time, by life, by business?

When will it not sting my heart to hear her name?

When will I know that I have let her go in a healthy way? 

Am I healed?

Are we ok?

Like I said, easy questions.  I stumble over digging for God's purposes and allowing some of the unseen to remain His mystery.  I am learning daily that it is not a "quiet time" that I am needing, but a day-long walk with my Jesus.  I miss Him....want to be near Him...find myself shh-ing the kids some times just to get lost for a minute in a song......funny, they are beginning to understand it...and sometimes they even get lost in it with me.

If someone would have told me that this is where I would be 5 months after her birth and death, I would have called them a liar. I may have even hit them.  I could not have predicted the joy that has been a part of these months, the road marked with His presence.....I feel like I am at a gap in the road. A place where it is rather obvious that I am supposed to sit and rest....a fork in the road where I should take neither....merely wait.....so I will. I will stand in the gap- a trust.


I do not know what is ahead....I am afraid something else will happen...that a tragedy may strike and that I will not be able to make it....of course I do....but I thought that before...and He carried me...all the way.  Did He limit His love and care for me? Would He not do it again.....? I mean, He did bear immense pain and torture and DIE for me- a woman who shunned Him, betrayed Him, ignored Him........

so much love

He loves me enough to tell me the truth: that there will be hard times and that He will carry me through them.


I leave you with some pictures from our camping trip. 
It was so very hot, yet my kids are so very cool:)

yes, that is a pistol on his hip.