Today all started with a GoFundMe page. I had anxiously been following a little girl named, Adalynn who had been fighting for her life in a hospital in Tennessee. She opened my eyes today. She’s the reason I lived today.
3 AM. I hear a faint cry, not from my 6-month-old, but from my three-year-old. I stumble out of bed. Blind by sleep I feel my way to his room. I lie with him in his bed to let him drift off to sleep again and then I fumble back to my room. I think to myself… “I am so tired…”
5 AM. Yep, you guessed it. Baby is hungry. My eyes are so tired I have memorized the way to his room with my eyes crusted over with sleep. I throw whatever “sleep training” I have mustered in the past few weeks out the window as I carry him back to my room so that I can lay in peace while he chows down breakfast.
6:15 AM. Owen joins my bed and lays so close to me on my neck I can barely breathe. Fine. I give in. Bath time. Feeling bad for myself and my lack of sleep, I draw the bath.
7 AM. I get the boys in their towels, make my coffee and check my email. I click on the email subject from Go-Fund-Me, “Addy’s Heart”. I excitedly click on the email hoping for the news that she could stay on the transplant list for a new heart. Her mother’s words stopped me in my tracks, “Our family will have to say goodbye to the sweetest, bravest, strongest little girl I’ve ever known. Her brain injury is too severe for her to be a candidate for heart transplant. I’m broken. I don’t know how to live in a world that doesn’t have Addy in it. I don’t think I can do this but have to be strong for her…”
I wept. Thousands of us wept.
My mind raced. How can this be?! Why?! I held my children close and let my coffee go cold. I read the bible. I prayed.
Then I chose to live. I decided that today I needed to COUNT my BLESSINGS not complain about them. I chose to live in the moment with the two healthy children God blessed me with and to not see how they have made my life harder, but RICHER. I chose to enjoy the mess. Enjoy the diapers. Enjoy the cries. Enjoy THEM.
Adalynn. A total stranger made me live today, because she could not.
Thank you, sweet Addy! Rest in peace little one. It is because of you that I will love my children even more deeply than before. Go fly with the angels.
**Please see the link below if you can donate to her heart broken family**
Please consider giving to Adalynn’s family if you can. She is the reason I was able to get all of these images today. Please join me in praying for her sweet family.
Thank you to all of the businesses that allowed me to photograph in them!
Lewis & Clark Library https://www.lclibrary.org/
Bridge Pizza http://bridgepizza.com/helena
Super One Foods http://www.super1foods.net/
Downtown Barber Shop –Thanks, Sam! http://downtownbarbershop.us/
Blackfoot Brewery http://blackfootriverbrewing.com/
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