a year...

It was just a year ago this week.

A lot has happened in a year.

A year ago, I learned I was carrying a baby girl.

A year ago, we named her.  Eleanor Grace.

A year ago, we named her lots and lots of nicknames.

A year ago, we learned we might not have her in our arms for very long.

A year ago, we began to do life with her for as long as we had her, our Ellie in the Belly.

A year ago, I began to beg God, to sob and kneel before His throne and beg with every breath I took, for her life.

A year ago I understood what praying without ceasing - with eyes wide open - with groans and moans felt like.

A year ago, we added to our already long list of specialists and therapists.

A year ago, I began to understand the meaning of grace.

A year ago, I learned that life on this earth is not guaranteed.

A year ago, I remained steadfast that all are fearfully and wonderfully made.

A year ago this week, we learned of Ellie's initial diagnoses.    As I've gone back and reread my posts from that week, I can remember my emotions and where I was at any given moment and what I wore to each appointment and what doctors were saying and whose door I knocked on in tears to say I needed a friend to cry with and the phone calls we were forced to make to our parents.  I remember it all so vividly.  And I also remember the panic and the pain and the grueling emotional exhaustion.  And yet.  Yet, in some ways it is a blur.
And it amazes me how far off some of the early predictions for Ellie were.  The initial diagnosis would have been so simple.  The secondary diagnosis far more complicated.  And we ran the gamut of everything in between.
And I remember the doctors at two different locations who asked us to consider abortion.  Abortion.
It makes my stomach recoil to think of it.
And in that recoil I recall the grace of God who literally carried us moment by moment through the pain and tears and fear.
The God who saw fit to rock our world again.  The God who ordained that week and those moments and that baby in my womb - who knew and created her just as she is, who knew she would know heartache and pain and challenges and disability.  And joy.  And blessing heaped upon blessing.  And somehow that in the heartache and pain and challenges and disability - there is the joy and blessing all melted together.  Just as He created her for.

And I just rocked the precious seven and a half month baby to sleep - the baby many predicted would never survive or never have any "quality of life" (who are we to define that, anyway?)
And I am so thankful.
I am so blessed.

We have come a long way in a year.