Happy 4th of July!

We hope everyone has a wonderful day celebrating today. Andy has to work all day, so it's just Bella and I today. I have some work I have to get done and then we are going to go check out the town festivities. We will visit Andy for a while and maybe have lunch with him and then of course watch fireworks tonight. We have some sparklers for Bella to do tonight. It will be the first time she's used a sparkler so it will be interesting to see what she thinks. I of course will be sure to take pictures!

As most of you know today is bittersweet for our family. For years the 4th of July was a very special time for our family. All of our holidays were wonderful, but there was something about the 4th for us. I think it had a lot to do with my dad's love of fireworks and how cool Jason and I thought they were. It was always so exciting for us, whether we were setting them off on the street in front of our house or in a small town called Trout Lake with our friends Jim and Darlene. And then as fate would have it, 7 years ago today my brother and I stood in a hospital room with our arms around eachother as we watched Pop (for those of you who didn't know, we called my dad "Pop") leave this earth. All of sudden a day filled with such good memories and happy feelings was now tainted with an inescapable saddness. Time has been a friend to me. I am still sad, but it's not the unbearable weight that it once was. Today my saddness comes from the fact that my dad never saw me graduate from college, get married, or have a child. He would have been a great grandpa to Bella.

In October when I found out I was pregnat of course the first thing I did was calcualate my due date. You can imagine my surprise when I realized it was July 4! A day marked by the end of life would now be marked by the beginning also. The death of a grandfather and the birth of a grandchild. Although I realized the chances of actually delivering on my due date were slim, I really felt like God was giving our family a gift with this special date to hold on to. And then I miscarried. So many times I asked God, "WHY?" I simply didn't understand why he would allow this to happen. Not long after my m/c I was listening to my Jeremy Camp CD and the song, "I Still Believe" was on. The whole song is very special to me, but there is one part that has been stuck in my mind ever since. It says,

Though the questions still fog up my mind
With promises I still seem to bear
Even when answers slowly unwind
It's my heart I see you prepare

I now know that God is preparing my heart for something. I don't know what it is, but that's okay. It's not always easy, but ultimately I know that His ways are so much greater and that sometimes we have to trust that He knows what we cannot see.

So today, a day filled with some of my best childhood memories is also a day filled with saddness from the loss of my dad and now for the first time, the loss of our very much wanted baby. As I was thinking about it last night, I thought, "well at least I get it all over with in one day." ;)

With that, today is going to be a happy day for us. Bella and I are going to put on our red, white and blue and we are going to celebrate a day that for so many years brought me more joy and fun than any child could have ever hoped for. Those memories are ones I will never forget and there are the ones I'm going to choose to fill my day with.