One Year

Does one year sound like a long time?  I think it depends on what is happening in life.  A great year can fly by.  Good times can never last long enough.  But when things are rough just one day can seem to drag on forever.  Exactly one year ago today on August 21st I was blessed with my sweet, cuddly, busy, beautiful, funny baby girl, Arabella Grace.  At the time I had no idea just what a wonderful blessing she was!  The day she was born I was worn out in every way possible...physically, emotionally...I felt that I did not have the mental strength to take care of just myself, let alone anything or anyone else.  At that point I could not even fathom how I was going to get through one day.  Apparently, as I have learned, you get through one day one day at a time (sometimes one minute at a time)!  The weeks before Arabella's birth were a whirlwind.  10 days before she arrived, 4 year old Brad was diagnosed with a unicameral bone cyst in his femur.  Within 2 days he had gone through a surgery that left him immobile in a body cast up to his waist and propped on a wheelchair.  That first week of his recovery was...hard...to put it lightly...and then came a new baby!  This new little person who was completely dependent on me...at a time when my other baby needed me so much.  She was so perfect and innocent and new, and I loved her...but I (stupidly) didn't see how and where she was going to fit in with our family.  This little being that was the spitting image of her daddy, who seemed to have been born at the most inopportune time.  God's timing and plans are perfect though, so who am I to question that?  Time slowly went by.  After 6 weeks Brad was out of the cast and re-learning how to walk.  After 3 months I started back at school full time online.  We all bonded with Arabella, and she became the light of our lives, the center of our universes.  She was such a content newborn, hardly ever cried.  Her sisters and brother and I completely fell in love with everything about her.  She fit right in with us, and seemed to go with the flow of everything.  Skip ahead to now...8 days ago marks one year of Brad's surgery.  Although his leg is not yet completely healed, and he is not allowed to run, jump, or climb, he is doing so much better.  He goes in for x-rays again next month, and hopefully there will have been much healing since his last appointment.  8 days ago also marked one year of sobriety for Arabella's daddy, another difficult road.  Now as I look back on the past year, I have so much gratitude.  I am so thankful that in a few days when the kids go back to school, it will not be the same situation as last year.  I am eternally grateful for beautiful Arabella Grace, who I can't imagine not having in our family.  I have more faith and trust in God than ever before.  He has carried me through things that I never could have done on my own.  He has poured out his blessings on me, sometimes in ways I didn't understand and perhaps still don't understand.  I am incredibly thankful for my amazingly wonderful, hilarious children, all FOUR of them, because they fill my life with an immeasurable amount of joy, happiness, and love.  Happy day of birth my precious, irreplaceable baby girl...you are so incredibly loved.