The hardest part of saying goodbye is having to do it again every single day.
Every day we face the same truth. That life is fleeting. That our time here is short.
~One Tree Hill
Every morning I wake up and say goodbye to my sweet baby. My baby is my first thought every morning. How far along I should be in my pregnancy. The plans we should be making. The hugs and snuggling that will never be. I say goodbye to all the moments we'll never have. To all the memories we will never make.
The twelve minutes it takes from school to home in the morning, and the twelve minutes it takes from home to school in the afternoon are the longest minutes of my life. The deafening silence of being alone in the car. That empty spot in the backseat between Logan and Lucas. It is a glaring reminder that it will always remain empty. All of my daydreams of the boys playing and talking to the baby in the backseat are gone. Just like my baby.
Today, I stood in the middle of my classroom reading the science test to my first graders when we came to the vocabulary word, survive. Stay alive or stay with. Survive. And it almost brought me to tears. My baby didn't survive and yet somehow I manage to survive each day. That's what it feels like. Surviving. My voice cracked while reading the test. I teared up. I took a deep breath, and we moved on. My students are so good. They know when it happens that I need just a minute. The room is absolutely silent. I pull it together and we move on. I usually get extra tight hugs as they walk out the door. It doesn't matter which class it happens in, their reactions are the same. Most of my students know about the baby. They know I need just a moment. I'll pull it together. Then we'll move on.
Our time here is so short. It haunts me every day that I stood in Brittney's classroom that morning saying I wish I could fast forward to July when the baby was here. I had no idea in a few short hours I would be told my baby died. It's a good reminder how precious our time is. How fleeting it is. How we are not promised another day, hour, minute, or second. We have to make the most of what we are given. It's a reminder of how important it is to forgive. To show grace. To make right wrongs. Because we don't know if we'll have another opportunity.
The twelve minutes it takes from school to home in the morning, and the twelve minutes it takes from home to school in the afternoon are the longest minutes of my life. The deafening silence of being alone in the car. That empty spot in the backseat between Logan and Lucas. It is a glaring reminder that it will always remain empty. All of my daydreams of the boys playing and talking to the baby in the backseat are gone. Just like my baby.
Today, I stood in the middle of my classroom reading the science test to my first graders when we came to the vocabulary word, survive. Stay alive or stay with. Survive. And it almost brought me to tears. My baby didn't survive and yet somehow I manage to survive each day. That's what it feels like. Surviving. My voice cracked while reading the test. I teared up. I took a deep breath, and we moved on. My students are so good. They know when it happens that I need just a minute. The room is absolutely silent. I pull it together and we move on. I usually get extra tight hugs as they walk out the door. It doesn't matter which class it happens in, their reactions are the same. Most of my students know about the baby. They know I need just a moment. I'll pull it together. Then we'll move on.
Our time here is so short. It haunts me every day that I stood in Brittney's classroom that morning saying I wish I could fast forward to July when the baby was here. I had no idea in a few short hours I would be told my baby died. It's a good reminder how precious our time is. How fleeting it is. How we are not promised another day, hour, minute, or second. We have to make the most of what we are given. It's a reminder of how important it is to forgive. To show grace. To make right wrongs. Because we don't know if we'll have another opportunity.
"Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.
You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away."
James 4:14 (NASB)
No comments:
Post a Comment