My Time-hop from 3 yrs ago popped up today and slayed me.
Because I miss that. I miss that so very much.
Those smiles we shared were so much lighter, more blissful and easier to come by before we shared the ugliness of bloody loss, and the deep trauma of burying the shell of our beautiful precious and most perfect daughter.
I miss relishing in the victory of Earthly Gia-miracles together…a sense of beating the odds. I miss the laughter before death assaulted the story. I miss our 6 yo sparkle gem between us pressing her beautiful heart bravescar tightly against our hearts as we squished her.
Marriage is hard work regardless of your circumstances. But carrying the Bloody heart wounds of child loss has the power to kill and destroy your intimacy. The sobering statistics are never ever lost on us.
Enormous Grief from the death of a child has the ability to violently ravage a marriage to smithereens, if you’re not intentional to allow the mutual pain to draw you closer, instead of tearing you further apart.
We need and depend daily on God’s strength in our utter weakness.
We need each other too.
Because as we pull each other and our family through the war-torn landscape of loss, there is a comfort in knowing that there’s no other person on this planet who understands the depths of our personal and our own unique mama & daddy Gia-pain, our co-existing joy and our mutual Gia-longing. And, this brings a great balm within the greater sorrow. Many times we look into each other’s eyes and just say (with no words needed) :
“This world just doesn’t understand, they do not get it.”
But We know.
Our children know.
We have great pain because we have great love.
You see, great love and great joy come at a high price.
Choosing to follow Jesus never promises an earthly fairytale.
Our story got hijacked 18 months ago because of a very broken world that we currently live in.
But, the enemy of death will not win.
We’re promised Eternal Joy that far outweighs all this heavy earthly pain.
Death does NOT have the final say!
Our Gianna Lilyfaith lives!
This truth brings Forth life from death.
We fight forward together through the mess and mud and mire to see God’s seeds of redemption and His ultimate victory over death. Glimpses beyond the veil to the greatest story of defeat ever written.
Death loses and future reunion with our baby Is coming!
Every day is a choice to fight for life together within the depths of our messy brokenness.
We flounder and fall and we fail often, but each time we rise up to grip to each other and we grip tightly to truth so that we can witness life growing around a dark aching hole that threatens to swallow us up whole.
We intentionally wrestle to see God bloom purpose out of our pain.
We still smile and defiantly laugh, and that’s a gift that I am so thankful for.
But it is so different now.
The smiles are now heavier and the laughter now carries a mutual awareness of a deeper agony underneath.
But, our God carries us through the valley of shadows.
You see, Our Gia-Bia forever taught us how to bravely live and grow while carrying a broken heart.
And, now …..Together, Brian and I hold Our own painful heart bravescars that tells a story not of death, but a story of brave redeeming LIFE!🦋 #liveGiagrowforever
ps. ***a head’s up! So, Brian and I are planning to do an unscheduled live video soon on our “family miracles page” (see link below to join). We have some news, updates and personal thoughts to share, in honor of adoption awareness month, and we just feels like this needs to be shared in a more “unscripted and personal” way!
Stay tuned!!! join at this link below:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/journeytogianna/
