Capture Your Grief - Day 1 - Sunrise

This month is Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness month.  I am participating in a month long healing event called "Capture Your Grief", organized by CarlyMarie Project Heal.  Each day of the month there is a prompt for taking a photo & writing/journaling.  Today the prompt is sunrise, and this is how I chose to share it.

This rose bush is in the front of our house, and it reminds me of our sweet Arabella Grace every day.  It started blooming right around the time that we learned of her prognosis, and it is still blooming today.  It is my favorite shade of pink, and was supposed to be the main color of Ellie's nursery.  And the tiny little rosebuds just remind me of Ellie's perfect little rosebud nose & lips.

"He is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings grass from the earth."

2 Samuel 23:4

Just three months ago I would have looked at you like you were crazy if you told me to wake up to see the sunrise.  But these days it's rare if I'm not already awake.  Grief has turned this once solid sleeper into an insomniac of the worst sort...I struggle to fall asleep, I struggle to stay asleep & I struggle to go back to sleep.

As dawn breaks on this first day of October, I've got a lot of things on my heart.

Today I should be miserably pregnant.
Today I should be in full-on nesting mode.
Today I should be talking to a sweet baby kicking me from the inside.
Today I should be nervous about the impending labor & delivery.

But I'm not.
And it sucks.

I've realized that October is going to be really hard.  I've got things planned to get me through it.  Things that will make me laugh & smile.  Things that will inevitably make me cry.  I could fill my schedule to the brim with things to do but one thing isn't going to change...it is going to be hard.  In order to heal, I have to mourn every aspect of this loss.  Including the things mentioned above.

With every inch of my being, I wish we were celebrating Ellie's birth this month.  We will still celebrate the short time that we did have with her here on earth.  But there is still so much sadness for me, and that is part of this month too.

I might need a little extra grace this month.  I will need to extend just as much grace to others.  And as I watched the sunrise this morning, I realized how thankful I am that God's mercies are new every morning.

"Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.

They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness."

Lamentations 2:22-23