Oblivious to the World of Baby Headstones

As I've mentioned before, I always feel melancholy and reflective each year around my birthday/new school year/fall time, as well as Lily's birthday and the start of the new calendar year.

Starting school back up has brought back a lot of feelings and memories from when I was a fresh 18-year-old, starting college and on my own for the first time.

This is a photo of me just about a week before my 18th birthday and the start of college (I had to be on campus on my birthday that year for cross-country training).

In a way, it feels as if I'm grieving my loss of innocence. Who I am now, six years later, is completely different than who I was then. I was so young, vulnerable, and naive. I was looking for passion, purpose, and meaning. I knew I was called to something specific, but didn't know what.

I was oblivious to the world of baby headstones, grief and loss, motherhood, and abortion... in many ways, I wish I could go back and do things over. I wish I could somehow know what I know now, without knowing the heaviness of it all. I wish I could do it over again and make wiser decisions. Decisions honoring to the Lord.

I know that God always knew what was to come. And He had His story of beauty and redemption waiting to be written. The chapters were already being written, even when I could not see it.

Something else I've been thinking of since starting school is the fact that I will be graduating in the spring of 2016. That same year, Lily would have been finishing Kindergarten. Instead, she will never begin Kindergarten. She will never be my five-year-old. Always my baby.

I guess if I wish to do things over, that would mean I'm wishing Lily away. And I could never wish her not to be. She was always meant to be because God knew what choices I would make. And He had a glorious plan.

Sometimes it's so hard to wrap my mind around it all... sometimes I am caught off guard with moments of grief, the grief of my loss of my two babies, as well as the loss of my innocence.

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