Seven years ago today

Seven years ago today I brought a small, fragile, 2 year old girl to her forever home.  We spent the day with her amazing first foster mom.  We traveled together to Riley for some doctor appointments and then I drove home from her house with a smiley quiet girl in my back seat.  We approached our house to find it decorated with “It’s A Girl” signs and balloons.

It’s a girl.  That she was.  A girly girl with her hair bows, sparkly shoes and a million purses.  Barbies and American girls dolls.

These last couple of years she would say things to me like “You’re the best mommy in my whole totally life!” (she had a little valley girl in her as well!)  And I would respond to her and say “Thanks Laila because you had two mommies before me too!”

Today I just want to share that she was totally and completely mine.  Not in the sense that I’m saying she wasn’t theirs too because I believe with my whole heart that she was.  I’m speaking of the condition of my own mind and emotional attachment to her.  I do not feel that I could love that girl in any more of a fierce way, even if I had given birth to her.  She wiggled her way down into my soul in a way that I just don’t know if I will ever recover from.  I have had a few people remind me in my grief that “deep love experiences deep grief in loss.”  That is absolutely the truth.

Seven years ago today a tiny girl was carried through my door and stayed for her forever.  I would not change it for anything.  I wouldn’t change the nights of sitting up with her crying or the changing and changing and changing her clothes after a vomiting episode.  I wouldn’t change the million trips to Indy or the struggles of disagreeing with doctors and fighting for what she needs.  Or the IEP meetings and trying to make people see and understand her through my eyes; the eyes God gave me to see her so differently and to see her ABILITIES not her “disabilities.”  I wouldn’t change the hours and hours of therapy that we traveled to.  I wouldn’t change the countless times on the phone trying to fix whatever mistake the medical supply company had made that day (and if you know me, Apria is my absolute nemesis!!).

I wouldn’t even change my broken heart.

I wouldn’t change a single day or a single minute.

Because she was worth it.