Wandering...

Today is one of those days where I have had a million thoughts racing through my head, so fast that I'd be lucky to catch just one. So, since it's wonderfully quiet in the house today (tandem naps - woohoo!) I went blog wandering. It's funny how you stumble across them. As you've probably found, one leads to another, which leads to another which leads to another that has very little in common with the one you started at, yet, somewhere there, there's a common thread. Yesterday I read an amusing play by play on piglets being born among other things. Today I sat down for a few minutes, looking for some home inspiration (which I'll probably get into later) and clicked around to some familiar places and ended back reading about a yard sale painting with a wonderful message.

Psalm 40:5

"Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders you have done. The things you planned for us no one can recount to you; were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too many to declare."

It's hard not to slip back into that pit of grief and I started thinking about it, while cleaning the bathroom of all things, and I realized that my grief is not really for the loss of Eli. He's safe. He's happy. He's healthy. He's perfect. He's running the streets of glory hanging out with some really cool people. But what I'm grieving is the loss of all of the "could have been's" for us as a family.

I was thinking about a pink baby tub/sling that we were going to purchase at Target. Then I had to slap myself back into the reality of the fact that #1, Eli's in Heaven and #2, he was a boy and we probably wouldn't have gone out of our way to purchase him a pink tub... blue probably, well, maybe. I'm not sure if it's all part of the loss process or if it's yet another unique situation. See, my "gut instinct" couldn't really settle on what I thought we were having, his high heart rate pointed to a girl based on the old wives tales. During the fateful ultrasound, I asked if she could tell the gender, she commented that "there was nothing to indicate that baby was a boy, looks like a girl". However, upon delivery, he was quite clearly all boy! So, I'm not sure what that's all about in my head. I had started the grieving process for our baby girl (if only for 2 days) and then had to start over grieving our little boy, Eli. I guess it was just one more of those "things" and probably why I still get that sinking feeling at baby items period... gender just doesn't matter. I'm not even sure why I brought that up other than, even that is something that was written in God's plan.

I have faith that God's plan is for us to prosper and I have to grow and learn from this situation. However, I also don't want to wallow in it. Yes, I know this blog is about my healing process and part of that process is going to have to be writing about the other things in my life besides Eli. He was a short entry in our lives that has made a huge impact but I have to make sure that the impact is a positive one. I want something good to come of this, I'm just not sure what it is going to be yet. I have a few ideas of how I can help other moms going through the same thing but I don't want Eli's life and death to be for not.