Erased

I don't want to be the only one who remembers and loves her the way I know I always will. Even if it was only me, that would be enough. Even when I am gone from this world and Lily is truly forgotten on Earth, by that point, I will actually be WITH her in Heaven, with the God who created her and could never forget or forsake her.

I think what I am afraid of is her being erased in people's minds and hearts, gone from this world. Her little girl laughter and chatter is not present in our everyday lives, yet her legacy and memory is ever-present for me. I am the only one who felt her kick, felt her life. She wasn't just an idea of a baby. She wasn't a potential life. I felt her life and her spirit. She will never be just a memory for me, but always my cherished daughter.

Even if she were erased from every heart and mind in this world, she cannot and will not EVER be erased from Eternity. She is there and she is not going anywhere. She is an eternal being, an eternal flower as I have written before. Though her life here feels like it was erased, a life I attempt to see through the hazy lines of what could have been... I know that her life there, the place my heart longs for, my true home, will never disappear, erase, be forgotten. It is there where the hazy and unclear lines will be filled in - clear and full-of-color will they be, as the life she never lived here will be perfectly lived out there.

As John Piper wrote in a letter to a mother whose son was stillborn:

"First, please know that I know I don't know what it is like to give birth to a lifeless body. Only a small, sad band of mothers know that. I say "lifeless body" because, as you made clear, your {daughter} is not lifeless. {She} simply skipped earth. For now. But in the new heavens and the new earth, {she} will know the best of earth and all the joys earth can give without any of its sorrows."