JOY

ust about a year and a half ago I was lamenting my childless state in the following note dated June 2009:
Is grief too strong a word for the ache of missing what one has never had? Or is it merely disappointment? Can I really hold up my experience to one who has lost a loved one? Put it in the same category? I shrink from doing so. Yet grief is the word that comes to mind when emotion swallows me, leaving me inert and helpless against its onslaught. Grief catches me off guard when I sit or work in a quiet house, even though it's the same quiet that's always been there. Grief assails me sometimes when I turn my key in the lock, opening the door into the emptiness that lately seems yawning. No shoving it aside, stuffing it down, or looking at it from a different angle lessens its intensity.
Now it's Christmas time 2010. And I feel a quiet joy steal over me. Last year at this time I was pregnant, but still holding my breath, hardly daring to hope that I might have a child-in-arms when all was said and done. And even now, over the last five months of our darling baby's life, I feel as though I've been letting my breath out slowly, relaxing into the fulfillment of dreams come true and finally allowing myself to freefall in love with my little girl -- To really love her so much that the joy bubbles, frothes, and overflows...
Can it really be? Can this perfect little girl be mine? The eyes that shine like dark gems, the nose-crinkling smile, the sweet giggle that escapes the rosebud mouth – are these really all a part of a child that I call my own? The thought overwhelms me when I feel her baby-smooth skin against my cheek, when I smell her sweet milky scent, when she looks up at me so seriously with those child-wise eyes and then breaks into a brief, dazzling smile. Why me? And how me? How can this great happiness be mine? Marriage to a man who I am so in love with and now a child to complete our home – for so many years these were just distant dreams. And yet here I am, where I was doubtful I'd ever be, living what I once thought to be an unattainable dream.
"Dear Heavenly Father, Help me to savor the joy as a gift from You, yet hold these same gifts with an open hand, understanding that all I have is Yours to do with as You will."