ASH

There are days when Tim and I look at each other and we wonder where the rewind button went. If I could go back to this part of the day, I could save it. Or if this one thing went differently the day would have gone so much better. Today was one of those days.  It started out so great! We played games, read books, seemed to grow enough arms to pacify four children all at the same time. And then . . . I dropped the lemon bread. Yeap, all of the delicious gooey goodness that was going to become tried and true Hawkins Family Christmas treat, got dumped all over the inside of the oven. It was as if I as a parent couldn't rebound from that. From there it was crabbiness and messes.

But yet, tonight, in the silence, the melancholy sets in and I can't help but think of our true number three. It was six years ago, almost this exact time when the contractions I was praying weren't there started rolling and just wouldn't stop. Through that long and seemingly endless night we said good bye to the baby we were so hoping to meet several months from then. Christmas eve has never had quite the same joy as before.

Tonight I take a moment to side step from foster care and just grieve. Maybe this year is harder because we also said good bye to SS this month. Or maybe it is because we just had great fellowship with friends whose son would have been in her kindergarden class this year. Or maybe it is always like this and I forget from year to year. But this year, for whatever reason, I find myself sitting here thinking of her. What would she have been like? What gift would we building to put under the tree? Would she be reading every book she found, or slowly sounding out letters? Was she my one organized one who would have wanted to help line shoes up by the door? Or the one who couldn't see the mess she left behind as she built another beautiful masterpiece. I have said more than once, I am glad that God left a missing stair step in our family line. I like to look at the landscape of our family and still invision one more, right in between a brother and a sister. But tonight, that missing stairstep just seems to be missing.