Our Year in Review

It feels like such an appropriate day to end out 2017.I'm sitting here on my couch, with a space heater on (sitting in front of our fireplace, so it kind of feels like a fire...?) and our baby girl on my chest, taking a nap. We're both snuggled up together under a blanket.  She's just over two weeks old - she was born gloriously at her exact right time after almost a full day [literally] of labor and two days after her due date.  It wasn't the timing I wanted, and I wasn't very patient for the two weeks leading up to her birth, but the weekend God picked for her was perfect for so many reasons.  We're so happy she's here.And she's beautiful.The past two weeks have been a blur of uncertainty between which hours are daytime and which are nighttime.  More for us than for her even, it seems.  And while we've been forced to slow down and rest when the baby rests, I've been reflecting on this year.  Cliche, but true.Right now on Instagram it seems to be the trend, once again, to post the "best nine" photos from your year.  I think it comes from which photos are the most liked on your account over the past 12 months - and the app creates a fun photo collage of those top liked pictures for you to share on your social media.  I remember when that trend started a few years back.  I was pregnant with Jacob and my emotions about it turning to the year he was due were heavy.  I was about to enter January 2016, the month before his birthday, and it was a long and painful and heavy month of anticipation.  We were certainly excited to meet our little boy, but we also knew it meant saying goodbye.  It was a surreal feeling.  He was so loved, and yet, we knew it was going to be so painful.We were right.  It was painful.  But it has been beautiful too.  A joy to be his mom.  A new experience for me, for both John-Mark and I, as we became parents and began to learn what it would mean to parent a baby who was no longer with us on Earth, but who had the immensity of life in Heaven.And last year, as we left the year that Jacob was born, my heart was heavy again.  I wasn't ready for 2016 to end.  I wanted it to forever remain the year that he lived.  As if staying in 2016 would keep me closer to him.Neither of those years felt like the appropriate times to pick my best nine posts from the year.  It felt oddly painful.  I think I still made the collages both years out of pure curiosity.  And Jacob was the center of each of them.  I never shared them, though.  Even the thought of it stung.This year, if I were to make a "best nine," I can guess which pictures would be the most liked, and for good reason.  We had a lot of celebrating to do - probably a few of them would be only from the past two weeks where our little girl arrived.  She is so worthy to be liked and celebrated.  Just like her brother, we love her because she's ours.  Our hearts are full with her in our home with us.  It's not bad that most of my top liked pictures would be about her life.  Truly, not bad at all.But this morning as I was reflecting on it, I realized that the trend to find my "best nine" didn't just rub me the wrong way because it was a painful two years or because other peoples' squares looked so happy.  My pictures weren't all sad.  And I wasn't upset that other people had really joyful things to share.  Honestly.  I, too, have had happy things to post pictures of and I didn't hesitate to share my "best nine" simply because I was jealous of other peoples' lives.I realized, instead, that it seems to sting a little to think about creating a perfectly curated box of my best pictures from the year because the best nine moments of my life this year can't be found perfectly curated on my social media accounts.This year was hard.  Beautiful.  Full of moments that were real and raw and caught in the silence or the tears or the words shared behind closed doors.  Things I don't normally photograph.  Just moments lived.  I'm not saying that others weren't living in the moment of their own lives or anything at all.  But some years, the best moments of our lives go beyond what goes on display.  And that's what this year was for me.There's a simple beauty there that I appreciate today.Because life is hardest and sweetest and beautiful in the in-betweens.  Those moments that aren't seen by everyone.  Maybe by anyone.  And I think my best moments have surely occurred in the space in between the photos I've taken and much more so between the photos I've shared.It feels like the perfect, quiet, appropriate space to celebrate today.  And so celebrate I will.So in no particular order of importance, I thought I'd share my top nine moments of real life this year.  A celebration of 2017.  Another year coming to a close, and all the fullness of what that means.  Here are my Best Nine...

1.  The two quiet and brave prayers I whispered in my dark bedroom in the middle of the night when my grief was too much to bear back in January and February. "Lord, will you give us a house in 2017? Will you also somehow give us a baby in 2017?"
2. The question over lunch a few days later - "Do you want to live in [our] house?" - to which I answered instantly and strongly... no.  And then we moved in three months later and it's been a dream.
3. The late night of tears and worry in late April when my blood work was flagged at 6 weeks pregnant and we made up our minds to continue to follow Jesus regardless of the status of the baby.
4. The teeny tiny heartbeat and the due date.  Mid-December. 2017. One day I will share more about those two prayers and the significance of God answering them.
5. The prayers and love and space for grief that we were given at a staff prayer time in Ocean City when our grief and fears for the future were at this crazy collision. It was right around my due date for the baby we miscarried last December which was also a few days before we were to find out if our baby was going to be diagnosed healthy or with another neural tube defect.
6. The words we had longed to hear, from our high risk doctor. "Everything looks great" - and then the shock and tears that followed.  Including that night when John-Mark spoke some of the truest and most life-giving words to me that I've ever heard.
7. The gift of continued grief over Jacob while we anticipated our daughter's good health and the capacity to experience sorrow and joy.  Sometimes at different times and sometimes simultaneously.
8. Reading in the mornings at my breakfast table, with my eggs and toast [or grits with sausage] and the prayers prayed in response to God's Word.
9. Of course, most beautifully, welcoming our second child into the world.  A baby girl.  Prayed for, loved, cared for.  The perfect next addition to our family.  She's brought such delight to us - in the months leading up to her birthday and in the weeks following her birth.  Not void of the hard, at times, but delightful.

Like I said, it feels like an appropriate day to end out 2017.  As this year has reminded me once again, God is with me.  He's good.  Even when the circumstances around me feel shaky.  And he sees me.  In those hidden places, in the ones that don't make the social media squares, in the moments of the in between.  Here's to more small moments that end up being the big moments.  I look forward to watching them unfold.