It’s been six years, six months, and nineteen days since I held her, a beautiful tiny miracle of feisty spirit and dark hair. My life began changing in a way I would never have imaged since that day.
It’s been three years since I held that beautiful girl. Three years since I looked into her blueberry blue eyes and lost myself in their beauty. My life has forever changed. I’ll never be the same.
While part of me goes back and feels the pain of that night all over again, it can’t find any beauty in her actual death. It was hard and not pretty and heatbreaking and helpless. And yet, there were metaphors of beauty surrounding us that awfully dark night and I choose to cling to them. Because that is where Hope lies and that is where in the deep, dark, ugly place, the seed began to push upward toward the sun.
She laid in her Daddy’s strong arms, the only place she felt like she could truly relax that night, her little head snuggled against her Daddy’s strong heart, feeling safe and secure and so loved. (Just like our Jesus Daddy loves us and holds us close.) I laid my hand over her heart, and I felt that steady beat, like the steady tiptoe of angel wings, brushing in rhythme and my body relaxed just the slightest, because there was a steadiness I was hanging onto in that dim room of grief, and though her breath slowed down, her rythme stayed the same.
Until it stopped. No shuddering. No agonizing prolonged warning. It simply STOPPED.
And I whispered, “Run! Run to Jesus!”
And you, my Darling Kierra, You Ran!
There was nothing beautiful about your death, my dear. But there was so much beautiful about your life. The life you embraced HERE. And the life you embraced when you RAN.
And though my core still feels empty, washed out and lonely without you here to care for, talk to, and love up, and even the birds outside my window make me miss you, and I don’t know why, ….You RAN my darling! you ran and that is enough for me. Because you ran straight to Jesus!
This three year old, she changed my life. And even as I type this, I know that GOD really changed it, but He used a fair skinned, snuggle cheeked, Princess Wildflower Warrior to do it.
You taught me that true patience does not always count the minutes or the hours but it is a fragrance that blossoms in beauty in a world of time…knowing that nothing lasts forever. That holding on one more minute is all that we need.
You taught me that true bravery sometimes suffers silently in lonely places instead of boldly standing on the front lines.
That true love is unconditional and expects no returns. One can never repay the magnitude of it all. Love reaches past convenience and expectations. It loves fully and wholly and at exactly the place we are in life at this very moment.
You taught me that solitude is golden. That beautiful music, seclusion , and rest, are sometimes exactly what the heart needs most.
That every day is a special occasion when you have your family around you. That life is meant to be lived NOW in exactly the time and place you find yourself in.
You taught me about God, Kierra. New pathways of my heart opened to Him and His love.
His acceptance of me became overwhelmingly beautiful. That my performance will never win me Heaven or favor. That we are divinely loved and cherished and that there is so much more to life then living in fear of failure and not getting it right. That He brings freedom and life and hope. That He invites us to walk in that amazing place of beauty.
Being. Just being. That’s all I wanted from you, my little Kierra child.
And I hear the words echo back into my heart.
Be. Just be.
Be genuine. Be alive. Be the light. Be the one who runs to Runs to Jesus. Just Be!
When you don’t know where to start or how to be, then you are at a wonderful place my friend. It’s a place to simply believe that God will show you how to BE. He is good like that. He created your heart and knows it intimately, even when you don’t know it yourself.
I’m on a journey of the heart. A journey of Hope. A journey of understanding more of the person God created me to be. A journey of Running to Jesus.
Wildflower Muse 