One year later

Friday was the first anniversary of our nightmare. Thankfully, most of the day was focused on other things (work, life, and our big news). But Bryan and I both solemnly remembered the occasion. We hugged our precious girl (and each other) a little tighter that morning, and I had to fight to keep it together on my way to work, remembering the commute that terrible day. Even now, after I read through that first blog post and just re-lived that first couple of days, I have tears streaming down my face. I wonder if the memory will ever stop making me ache for her like that. And I just can't let this anniversary pass without comment.

As much as I sit here aching, and as much as it still hurts to remember that awful, awful time, I honestly also see it as a testament to God's faithfulness and care for our daughter. Here we sit, a year later, and she has no memory of that incident. She is aware of the after-effects: she has a hand and arm massage twice a day; I catch her often staring at her hands and clenching and unclenching her fists, deep in concentration, and then rubbing the worst parts of the scars; she feels for heat on things with the backs of her hands instead of the scarred pads of her fingers. BUT. It doesn't bother her. She is still a carefree kid, delightfully unaware of the horror she faced a year ago. And, someday when she does understand what happened, she will never, ever have to carry the memories - we carry those for her. It's just life for her.

In some ways, to me, it feels like yesterday - I can so vividly remember so many of the little details of the day: calling my secretary from the cab, hearing the sirens as I neared my house, calling my coworkers from the ambulance, the horrible-tasting OJ in the ER at Children's after I passed out, the crowd of people around her sterile, metal crib those first moments at Shriner's, our pastor, in sweats and glasses, holding my sobbing husband and praying over our daughter, and countless others. But also in some ways it feels far away - it's all become a part of life, just a routine we deal with, just something we handle. We comment on the progress of her scars without emotion, we carefully make sure she's always slathered with sunscreen so her scars don't get any more pigment, we speculate about the scope of her probably-upcoming surgery as a matter of fact, I commute without fear of the phone ringing, and we live life. And it's OK. We're all OK. And we know we'll continue to get better and better.

I think September 10 is always going to be a difficult day, but it also reminds us of how far we've come and gives us tremendous hope.

Love this sweet girl so much!