My dear, sweet, headstrong Henny.  We are quickly approaching a year since the last time I saw your precious smile or heard your infectious giggle, since I saw your chubby hands reach for me to pick you up or felt your tiny arm pat my shoulder as I held you on my hip, since I tried every Speech Therapy trick in the book to convince you to use “one and two word phrases consistently” only to witness you willingly mimic and talk with your small cousin and your big sister, and since I saw your bouncy self peeking over the crib rails wanting me to rescue you every morning.  Oh Henry – I can’t believe it has been a year!

We are still trying to choose joy every day.  Some days it is easier than others.  Some days I fail completely.  While I’d do anything to have you back with us, I keep imagining you in Heaven – complete and perfect and in perfect communion with Christ, and there’s no way I could remove you from there to bring you back here . . . even if I could.

We are trying to focus on the cross and what it promises instead of on the storms that seem relentless and overpowering. This has been both the hardest year of my life and also the most spiritually strengthening.  I pray I can keep these spiritual blessings that have come with the unimaginably painful loss of losing you. I pray this pain will not be in vain.

My faith has been tested and attacked like never before, and yet I can sense the character of God evident in every step we’ve stumbled this past year.  God is good, even when I don’t understand His ways. God loves us unconditionally.  God suffers with us.  God uses our circumstances to accomplish His purposes, which are always good. God is eternal and our suffering on earth, no matter how severe, cannot compare to the unending joy we will experience when we are with Him. God is all-knowing – not even a sparrow dies outside of His knowledge.  So Henry, I find rest in the knowledge that you are a miracle knit together by God inside of me. He designed you specifically with a stocky build and a cowlick front and center.  He knew before you were born how many days you would live on earth, and what purposes your short life and death would fulfill.  Your birth, life and death are not outside of His love, His knowledge and His purpose.

But Henry, even with this knowledge and peace, and even with the comfort of His promises – I miss you so much.  I love you.  I ache for you.  And I’m so thankful that it is one less year I have to wait to see you again.

“And these are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of Him!  Who then can understand the thunder of His power?”  Job 26:14