Be the Miracle

After Ella recovered from her heart surgery and we were finally able to bring her home, my family and I were so happy.  Actually, happy doesn’t sufficiently describe how we felt.  We were nervous, excited, giddy, relieved, ready, happy.  We couldn’t wait to finally begin our life together as a whole family at home, just the five of us.  Even knowing that Ella’s heart surgery was never a “one and done” type situation couldn’t put a damper on our spirits when we left the children’s hospital.  We knew that future surgeries and hospitalizations were not ifs but whens.  We just never imagined that the when would happen so soon after her homecoming that Memorial Day weekend.

In August 2011, due to changes in her eating and breathing, Ella’s cardiologist ordered an echo to check her heart function.  The echo revealed that the surgical repairs to her heart were no longer functioning properly.  We had to return to the children’s hospital for a more thorough, internal check of her heart.  A visit to the heart cath lab showed that the pressure in her lungs was high.  That pressure combined with the failing repairs and her other inoperable heart defects meant an extremely poor prognosis for Ella.  The question my husband and I had feared to ask before – would Ella need a heart transplant? – was now something we hoped was even possible.  But would the high pressure in her lungs almost ensure the failure of a new heart, no matter how healthy that heart may be?

For the second time in our lives as Ella’s parents, my husband and I felt the floor drop out from under us.  Not only was Ella in heart failure again, but at that moment in time, no one was sure if there were a damn thing that could be done about it.  We were advised, in not so many words, that we should prepare for the possibility that nothing further could be done surgically and that we’d have to take Ella home to make her life as comfortable as possible until….

I’d had a lot of dark days before that moment, and I’ve most certainly had my fair share since, but in those moments after meeting with the heart cath doctor - while Ella was recovering from the lab visit and my family and I were trying to process this incomprehensible news together in the hospital chapel - I was enveloped by overwhelming sadness and even despair.  It had been one thing to make the statement that Ella was “my daughter but God’s first,” but it’s an entirely other thing to accept it, to live it, and to make peace with it and with the fact that God didn’t promise or guarantee me a certain length of time with my family here on earth, that God - not me - is in control of the length of her life.

And how could I, as a heartbroken mother, sit there and explain all of that to my two young boys?  How could I explain that while God did answer their prayers – their years-long prayers – for a baby sister, He might also call her Home before the three of them could really get to know one another?  How could I explain that in all things, God’s perfect will be done while I myself am mentally railing against the same #*&$%@ will that might steal my child away from me?  What could I say when my boys, while sobbing and holding onto me, tell me that we should try to be grateful that God gave us as much time with Ella as He did?  How could I resign myself to my own baby girl’s impending expiration date?

After almost a week of review, debate, and discussion by the cardiology and transplant teams and after constant monitoring of her condition by the PICU staff, Ella was placed on the heart transplant wait list.  What a day that was, and what a relief!  Only a few months before, we had dreaded even contemplating organ transplant, believing it to be a signal of the end, the ultimate last chance for our girl.  But on the day she was officially listed, we were very happy.  Being listed didn’t just mean that Ella had a chance, even a last one; it meant that other people – professional, educated, intelligent people who were the best in their field – also believed that Ella not only had a chance but that she could handle a second chance at life via transplant.  Ella was listed status 1A, and of course we joked that the A stood for “awesome”.

We knew Ella receiving a heart transplant would be a miracle in and of itself, but we also believed that God is an awesome God, full of surprises and infinite possibilities.  So while we waited for days and then weeks and then months for a new heart to become available, we also prayed for a miracle, like an actual “call the newspaper, we got us a MIRACLE to report” miracle.  We begged that God grant Ella miraculous healing, praying day in and day out that He heal not only Ella’s heart but also all the parts of her body that were ill-affected by her sick heart.  We asked that God grant Ella miraculous healing through the intercession of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, a holy woman with whom Ella shared the bonds of Native American ancestry and adoption.  We knew that, at the time, Kateri Tekakwitha needed one more miracle to pave her way to canonization, and we hoped that Ella’s miracle would be the one.  We prayed for miraculous healing for Ella, but it wasn’t meant to be.

What a hard pill to swallow after repeating Matthew 7:7 constantly while praying for my daughter.  We asked, but it wasn’t given to us.  We sought, but we didn’t find.  We knocked, but the door was all but slammed shut.  I remember having the gall to remind Jesus of the Canaanite Woman’s faith, desperately crying out her words, “even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from their masters’ tables” while hoping that my Ella would receive the “scrap” of a new heart or a miraculous healing.  “She’s such a small thing, Lord.  She won’t need a huge heart.  Just a scrap.  Please, Jesus.”

The morning after Ella died, my husband and I returned to the PICU one last time to collect her memory box, which contained a lock of her hair, the molds of her hand and foot, and a small book with personal notes from the medical staff who took care of Ella for all those months.  We were also there to say good-bye to the people who had cared for and loved our daughter for all those months.  One of the more difficult good-byes was to the ARNP who had most consistently taken care of Ella and who had been her medical caseworker (for lack of a better term).  I cried as I thanked her for all of her hard work on Ella’s behalf.  Over the course of several months and because of her near-daily visits, she had not only gotten to know Ella but she had also gotten to know me.  She knew how desperately I had wanted Ella to be well, how much I had hoped and prayed for a miracle.  Still crying, I hugged her good-bye, and as we stood there, she said, “You were her miracle.  You were her miracle.”

All these many months later, I still think about that moment and her words.  As much as I miss my girl and wish things were different and as much as I wish she had received her miraculous healing, I take a small bit of comfort in the idea that my husband and I were her miracle.  For as many “what ifs” as there are with regard to her death – what if she had lived long enough to receive a new heart?  What if different medical choices had been made?  What if we had recognized sooner the second time around that her heart was failing again?  What if?  What if? – there are many I think of with regard to her life.  What if we had made different decisions for her from the word go?  What if we hadn’t arranged for her new baby checkup as quickly as we did?  What if another family had adopted her and hadn’t had her seen by a pediatrician?  What if the cardiologist hadn’t immediately fit her into his schedule but made us wait until the next available appointment five days later?  What if the surgeon hadn’t waited until Ella was big enough and strong enough to undergo surgery?  What if?  What if?  

Were all of the decisions that we and the medical staff made the ones that gave her eight months, seven days, and twenty minutes of life?  Though she didn’t get a hugely spectacular, life-changing miracle, was her life filled with countless, small everyday miracles?  

A few months ago, my 11yo and I had a conversation about our wee Saint Ella.  I think he wanted to better understand how his sister became a saint, as he’s only got basic knowledge of the canonization process, most likely gleaned from conversations we’ve had at home regarding Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, Blessed John Paul II, and now Saint Kateri Tekakwitha.  He knew enough about the process to know that miracles are needed and have to be attributed to the intercession of the Blessed.  I explained that Ella was a saint because she had been baptized and had died an innocent in a state of grace, not having been able to even sin.  But then he told me that he knew what her miracle was.  He said, “She made people happy and made them feel good about themselves.  That’s what she did for me.”

I have had too much time on my hands over the past year to think about all sorts of inconsequential stuff, but I believe that at least one thing of substance has come from all these thoughts and talk of miracles.  I think that sometimes we want and expect too much grandeur, too much pomp and circumstance, too much showy, glitzy zing, so much so that we forget to appreciate that life is really about the small moments.  It’s about the living that goes on during the minutes that tick away between the loud hourly bongs of the grandfather clock.  So often the grand miracles we need or expect don’t happen, but we’re so caught up in waiting for them that we don’t recognize the miracles of everyday life.  We wait for God to perform His big miracle, not realizing or understanding that perhaps He's calling us to be that miracle.

Ella was my 11yo’s miracle.  She loved him like no one else did because she loved him simply for who he was and she really loved being with him.  She smiled when he held her and when he visited her in the hospital.  She didn’t judge him or call him names or say, “I love you, but…”  She made him feel good when so many others didn’t.  And Ella was my miracle.  Her short life was my moment on this earth of absolute, unconditional, heart expanding, life changing love.  She made me want to be a better mom and a better person.

Being told that I was Ella’s miracle profoundly affected me.  It moved me to look at this heartbreaking loss and Ella’s short time here on earth in a different light, and it has moved me to look at my own life in a different way.  I can’t help but ask myself how many times I’ve failed to be someone else’s miracle or how many times I hadn’t even realized that I could be someone’s miracle.  I wonder how many small miracles I may have missed by waiting for the big ones, how many opportunities I dismissed because being someone’s miracle is sometimes hard or inconvenient.

I think one of the best ways that I can honor my sweet Ella is to try to be the miracle for others.  I can be the help, not the hindrance; the love, not the apathy; the peace, not the stubbornness; the hope, not the discouragement.  And I can begin here today, not by waiting until I can make a huge difference out in the world only to become discouraged by how big the world is and how small my progress is, but by starting small, starting here in my home, and starting now with the people God brought into my life who matter most – my family.  Please, God, help me to be their miracle.

St. Ella, pray for us!

My Fiat

I try to post a picture of Ella on my blog every week, my “MABOP Monday” posts that always showcase the Most Awesome Baby On the Planet but aren’t always posted by Monday.  I post Ella’s pictures not just because I love to share her beauty and awesomeness but because they give a face to the name in all my stories and the reason for this blog.  Those pictures help me keep her memory alive.  So each week, if I don’t already have an idea of which picture I’m going to post, I search through the photos we have on our computers.  Yes, computers.

We have a finite number of pictures of Ella, but they're spread out over three computers and a memory card or two.  Some are on our old computer, and some are on the laptop I had at the hospital.  Where we stored them depended upon where and when we took the pictures and where we were when we needed to make more room on the camera’s memory card.  Thankfully, though, most of the pictures ended up on my husband’s work computer.  After Ella died, we did our best to consolidate the photos onto one computer.  Even knowing that, though, I have moments of panic when looking for a particular shot.  I panic because I can’t find it.  I panic because it’s not where I think it should be.  I panic because I need to see it; I need to reassure myself that the picture is still there.  God forbid I’ve lost it or it’s somehow been accidentally deleted because I can never get it back.  Those pictures can never be replaced.

My husband - God love him and his patience with me - bought a thumb drive this week that has A LOT of memory.  He bought it so that I could have everything Ella related from his computer here at home, no longer having to rely on his work computer for access to those pictures and videos.  He transferred not only Ella items but also all the old pictures he had of our boys.  It took a while because there was quite a bit to transfer, thank God.  When all was said and done, I was able to sit down and take a long walk down memory lane.  The older pictures of our boys cracked me up!  They were as cute and goofy back then as they are now.  The early pictures of Ella…those broke my heart and opened my eyes.  She was so small when we first brought her home!  The pictures we have out on the fridge are from when she was a little bit older, so I think I’d forgotten just how tiny she was.  She was just a wee little thing swaddled up in her crib, my sweet little burrito of love.  And then to see her so small in a hospital bed with lines and tubes coming out of her…wow.

Ella was six days old when she was first hospitalized, still a newborn really.  We have a picture of her from the first (local) children’s hospital after she was admitted but before she was flown to a different children’s hospital where she would spend over half her life.  She was still in her “I’d rather be in the womb than out here” mode – legs pulled up, hands balled into fists, face scrunched up, just so wee.  Her pacifier seemed to take up half her face, it was so big!

Because she was a heart baby, she was not only smaller than other babies but she also grew slower.  Her chances of making a big splash on the baby growth charts weren’t helped by the fact that, for the first part of her hospital stay, she wasn’t allowed to eat.  Because of the variety of congenital heart defects that Ella had and the problems each caused, the doctors had to make sure enough blood was perfusing to the lower half of her body, including her stomach.  Inadequate blood flow to her stomach would have caused serious problems, including lack of proper digestion and possible tissue death.  Even when feeds were started, they were very slow and of very small amounts.  So my wee girl stayed wee.  She was feisty and awesome and strong, but she was wee.

Looking through all of those early Ella pictures brought back so many memories and emotions.  They reminded me of how helpless I felt while Ella was hospitalized – helpless in my complete dependence upon God and His infuriatingly incomprehensible plan, helpless in my complete reliance upon all the nurses and doctors to keep me informed of everything that was going on, helpless in my complete inability to do anything to heal my daughter.

To feel completely helpless to do anything for your child is a horrible feeling.  I never felt more overwhelmed by the feeling of helplessness than I did one evening when my daughter needed to have her blood drawn.  Drawing blood from a person isn’t necessarily a difficult task for the average nurse, but when the patient is a small, newborn heart baby with perfusion issues who’s not only a difficult stick but is also clamping down [her already small veins seemed to shrink (clamp down) because it was more important for her vital organs to get blood than for her arms and legs], then that average everyday blood draw becomes decidedly un-average.  On this particular evening, several nurses had come into Ella’s room to try to help.  They tried to take blood from several locations on Ella’s body – hand, foot, scalp.  After quite a long time and numerous failed attempts, the fellow on duty came in to draw blood from the femoral artery.  An arterial blood draw is never the first option, but in this case after well over half an hour, several unsuccessful tries, and the angry cries of a very vocal, pissed off baby, it was the best option.

And all I could do while this was going on was watch, pace, pray, and cry silently.  I did my darndest to not just sob outright while this was going on, but it was very hard.  I could do absolutely nothing to help my daughter.  She was very angry and agitated.  She was screaming and crying, and I could do nothing to make all the pain and bother stop.  I rationally knew that the blood draw was for her own good and that it was medically necessary, but rational thought doesn’t mean jack when it comes to watching your baby experience pain.  A simple blood draw, yet it still makes me cry to think of it more than a year later.

In all of the emotion of that evening, I distinctly remember a thought I had that seemed to come from out of the blue:

If this is how I felt watching my baby girl have blood drawn, if I could feel so helpless as a witness to her helplessness, so overwhelmed by the desire to stop the pain and just hold her to me, so primal in my passion to protect her from all harm, then how much more did Mary feel while watching her Son, her sweet, innocent Boy, beaten, scourged, abused, taunted, tortured, and crucified, His own blood flowing down His brow, from His hands and feet, pouring forth from His side?

It used to sort of piss me off when people would say that I could look to Mary as an example, that she, too, was a mother who had to watch her Child suffer immeasurably, that I could learn not only how to say yes to God in all things but also that I could follow her example of grace-filled suffering.  I could trust God’s plan and say wholeheartedly, “May it be done unto me according to Thy word.”  In my grief, I would just scoff at that.  I would jump past the example of Mary to the make the point that this was different because her Son chose to suffer.  Her Son knew that He would have to suffer and still chose to go through all of it anyway.  My baby, born with a very sick heart, didn’t have a choice.

It took me months to calm down enough in my grief to remember Mary, His mother, who also must have felt helpless as a witness to her Son’s torture, so overwhelmed by the desire to stop the pain and just hold Him in her arms, so primal in her passion to protect Him from all who would harm Him.  How totally her heart must have been pierced by a sword with each and every scourge on His back, with each thorn in the crown He was forced to wear, with each hammer of the nails in His hands and feet, with each strangled breath He took while hanging on that cross.  The suffering I endured watching my sweet daughter experience pain was maybe one-one millionth of what Mary endured.  How humbling to realize how much pain and suffering her willing and unconditional “yes” to God, said with total obedience and trust in His word, brought into her own life!

Throughout my own journey with my children, most especially with my Ella, I’ve come to a certain realization:  when I said yes to the vocation of wife and mother and when I said yes to my children’s lives and their presence in mine, I opened myself up to the possibility of my own heart being pierced by a sword.  That’s all well and good when the only pain your children experience is the occasional scraped knee or bloody nose or when the only things that hurt are their feelings or their bruised egos.  What I hadn’t accounted for was the deep, soul-crushing piercing that happens when you spend day and night at the side of your critically ill baby, when you are powerless to help her, when even your mommy kisses aren’t enough to make the pain go away, and when you can do nothing more than hold her in your arms as she breathes her last breath, as her heart beats for the last time.  Nothing prepares you for the pain of such a piercing.  Nothing.

On January 1, the Catholic Church celebrated the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, the woman whose unconditional yes to God changed the course of human and salvation history.  I thought that it was such an appropriate way to start off the new year – remembering Mary, my mother; contemplating what it means to say yes to God’s call and to His will in my life, no matter how hard that may be; really thinking about how many times I’ve said “no, not now, maybe later, it’s too hard” instead of “yes!”; and understanding that God will not leave me alone or abandon me after I do say yes, that the strength to do His will does not come from me but from Him, and that I will be strong enough to do His will if I trust Him to lead me through it.

I’m not making any new year’s resolutions this time around.  I guess I could work on being better organized or on eating healthier.  There’s always room for that kind of improvement in my life, that’s for sure!  Instead, though, I’m going to focus more on making Mary’s fiat my own.  I’m going to work on saying yes to God more.  I’m going to pray more honestly Jesus’ own words “not my will but Thy will be done.”  And I’m going to remember that the deepest pain I’ve experienced in my life thus far, the pain of Ella’s death, a pain that pierced my heart so deeply, came hand in hand with the most overwhelming joy – that of being the mother of the most awesome baby on the planet.


St. Ella, pray for us!

The Weight of This Cross

This Thanksgiving my family and I went to my parents’ place for the first time in five years.  Oh, we’ve seen them in the intervening years, of course, for holidays, special occasions, the funeral, but they always traveled to us.  I am not a big fan of flying, what with the taking off, the flying tens of thousands of feet above the earth, and the landing.  But flying was worth it to see my parents on their turf, to hang out being the kid again, to have good talks and tell jokes in person, and to get the hugs you can only get from your mommy and daddy.  It was such a good visit, and I was so thankful simply for being home and for just being with them.

My parents are the reason why I was able to go to Mass this past Tuesday.  Their steadfast support of me, especially during these past eleven months, and their unwavering faith in the face of excruciating personal pain and devastating loss are examples I take to heart and the type of example I hope to be for others one day.  On Tuesday, almost eleven months to the day of Ella’s death, we attended the funeral Mass of a sweet baby girl named Lucy, who, at almost seven months old, died of health complications she had battled since birth.  Her parents are friends of my parents and are their fellow parishioners.

Up until the moment we got into the car, I waffled internally about whether I would even go to the funeral.  My own grief is still so fresh, so raw.  In the grand scheme of things, eleven months is not so much time, but when that is the time you’ve counted since your own baby girl died, then it really is no more than a flash, a momentary blink of the eye, even as it seems an eternity.

I waffled, but I then decided that I must go.  I had to be there to unite my prayers with the community that would mourn Lucy’s death with her parents, the same community that prayed with my parents for my sweet Ella.  I wanted to express how very sorry I was for their loss and to say that even though I don’t know exactly what they’re feeling, I sort of do. I had to be there to cry once again for my own sweet saint, for my own loss that I still feel so keenly, for my Ella whom I mourn and miss every day. And I wanted to hug this newest, heartbroken mother of a saint.

There is an undeniable truth that all moms know.  Whether their children grew under their hearts or in them, upon being placed in their mother’s arms for the first time, they forever take a piece of their mom’s hearts with them.  That is why we moms feel everything so deeply when it comes to our kids - why we feel their joys so intensely, their pains so sharply, their disappointments so profoundly.  When our children took a piece of our hearts, we moms lost the right to feel selfishly.  We lost the right to withhold our own hearts from another person.  They took a piece of our hearts, while at the same time, we gladly handed our hearts to them.  There is nothing on this earth quite like a mother’s love, but that also means that there is nothing on this earth quite like a mother’s loss.

Too often I think that our society views pain - or the prospect of pain – as something to be avoided at all cost.  We view suffering as meritless, as though there can be nothing redemptive about it.  We don’t give ourselves enough credit for the capacity with which we can give and receive love or the compassion we can freely and wholeheartedly offer to those who suffer or to those with whom we share suffering.

When push comes to shove and we are forced by circumstances beyond our control – storms, floods, etc. – to accept suffering, to deal with it head on, we do so with gusto and a level of commitment that staggers the mind.  Just look at the can-do attitudes of those devastated by recent epic storms.  An act of God wreaked havoc on their lives, but “by God!” they are going to carry on.  They are going to get up, move forward, and do what has to be done.

Why not then for these greatest acts of God among us?  Why not for our unborn children?  Our unborn kids already have targets on their backs and are offered all too frequently on the altars of convenience and “it’s just too hard.”  Those targets only get bigger when those children come with difficult prenatal diagnoses of physical or mental imperfections.

Why can we not extend that same compassion and can-do spirit to their lives, however short those lives may be?  Do they not deserve the best we have to offer, and shouldn’t our best include all the love we can give and any sacrifice we may be required to make?  Don’t these kids deserve every ounce of compassion we have and then some?  Why do so many rush to solve inconvenient “problems” by ending lives instead of saying, “Yes, I will fight.  I will try.  Even in the face of terrible, incredible odds, I will give you my all because you are a person.  You are a worthwhile and precious act of God.”

One of the cheesiest movies I’ve seen in the last decade is “A Walk to Remember.”  That it stars a pop star from the early 2000s should tell you that it weighs heavy on the cheese scale.  That said, it contains one of my favorite lines: “Without suffering, there would be no compassion.”  Think about that for a minute.  Whose suffering?  Mine?  I’m a miserable hag when it comes to suffering!  I might offer it up, but I’ll likely do it a bit grudgingly, and even then, you’ll hear about it!  No, my suffering doesn’t elicit my compassion.  The suffering that draws compassion is that of others.  Please don’t get me wrong; I wouldn’t wish another to suffer simply so I could put on a great display of compassion!  But we live in a fallen world corrupted by original sin.  We exist this side of Heaven; therefore, we exist in a world full of suffering.  We are surrounded by it.  How frequently do we turn a blind eye toward suffering when it is neither in our face nor on our TVs but is instead in the womb?

When we adopted Ella, we had no idea that she had multiple congenital heart defects (CHD).  All we knew was that we loved her before we knew her.  We loved the idea of her, and when she was placed in our arms, we loved her forever and unconditionally.  That we did that much in light of her seriously complicated medical condition and that we eagerly finalized her adoption astounded some people.  I distinctly remember one man’s reaction upon learning Ella’s story.

We were at the Ronald McDonald House (RMH) for a dinner that had been provided by a local church’s adult Sunday school group.  As was common practice, various church members spoke to the RMH residents to hear our stories about our children and then to ask if they could pray for us.  As hard as it could be to talk about how sick Ella was, I was always glad to have more people praying for her.  I explained that my daughter was waiting for a heart transplant, and as usual, I then explained that we hadn’t known about her CHD before her birth, we had adopted her, etc.  During this conversation, a young man and his wife sitting at my table were listening.  The wife was a believer, but the husband wasn’t and also seemed to be skeptically disdainful toward believers.

Later, the young man asked about Ella.  He just couldn’t seem to wrap his brain around the fact that my husband and I proceeded with Ella’s adoption even after we found out how sick she was, that we chose to love her because of who she was and not because of what she had or didn’t have, that she was our child – our blessed act of God – in spite of her sick heart and including her sick heart, that we could not remember our lives before her or imagine our lives without her.  It amazed me that a man whose own child was ill at the hospital would not be able to see past the circumstances of our daughter’s arrival to our family.  Just as abortion would never have been a consideration had Ella been conceived in my womb, abandoning her to her CHD was never a consideration either.  She was our daughter.  She is our daughter.

Given the option, I never would have purposely chosen this hellish pain or endless suffering, but would I choose to live without it if so choosing meant that I would never have known Ella?  If it meant that, while I would remain untouched by the pain of infant death, I’d also remain untouched by the love of the most awesome baby that ever lived?  If so choosing would eliminate the impact that her sweet life has had on my life and on the lives of my family and friends?  Of course not!  I wouldn’t trade a second of my short time with Ella for anything, not even blissful, pain-free ignorance.  I don’t think any of the mothers of saints that I know would trade this daily pain of loss for the time with which they were blessed with their children.

A while back, my mom heard a priest quote his mother, saying, “The Lord didn’t tell us to drag our cross and follow Him.  He said to carry it.”  When we choose to love our children unconditionally, as parents are called to do, we choose to bear the weight of a cross.  Love isn’t just some feel good, mushy, fluffy emotion that we shrug off when it becomes hard.  Love is choice.  Love is sacrifice.  Love is not focused on self but on other.  And we don’t get to choose how much the cross of love – of parental love - weighs.  Sometimes carrying that cross feels like more than we can bear, especially if we are also bearing the weight of our sick child’s cross.  It is so heavy, so painful, so overwhelming.  But who among us would walk away from that cross?  Who would look her child in the eyes and say, “You’re on your own, kiddo.  I am too tired and too weak.  You’re just not worth it”?

Since Ella’s death, I have tried and failed and tried again to unite my suffering with that of Christ on the cross and to offer up this pain for my family, for my friends, for myself, for Him to do with as He wills.  I try, but so many days I feel as though it’s enough that I’ve peeled myself up off the floor.  I grew up hearing my mom say, “Offer it up!” so often when I was faced with pain and disappointment, but I never before felt that I had to “offer it up” so many times a day, so many days a week.  But I continue to try, and every time I try and fail, I offer it all up again – the pain, the frustration, the anger, the loss.  I offer it at the foot of His cross because how much more did He bear for me?  He fell.  He got back up.  Can I do no less?

This Thanksgiving holiday, I went to a funeral.  I went because I have to believe that there’s a reason bigger than I can see or understand for the cross that I’ve got to bear.  I’ve got to believe that Lucy’s life, like Ella’s, wasn’t in vain, and that my suffering and the suffering Lucy’s parents must endure isn’t in vain.  We chose our children’s lives, and in choosing, we chose to accept and to live with the inconvenience of their imperfections.  We chose to love them, our sweet acts of God.  We chose to see them as the whole of their parts, not just to dismiss the parts that were imperfect.  I went to a funeral because this world is corrupt and quite obviously not Heaven, but being in the presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist is as close to Heaven as I can get while on earth.  I went to a funeral because we mothers of saints have to support each other.  We have to be willing to offer the same compassion to each other that we offered to our children.  We have to show this imperfect world that sometimes inconveniences are the greatest blessings one can ever experience.

I went to a funeral this Thanksgiving because I am thankful for the life of my daughter and for the life of Lucy and for the lives of all those wee saints who have gone before me.  By the grace of God, I made it through, and for the glory of God, I would do it all again.

St. Ella, pray for us!