Finding Her

Today, I felt her everywhere but could find her nowhere.

So, I did something I've neglected to do for well over a month...I grabbed my phone and
headed outdoors, a daily occurrence when she was alive.


I heard her in the crisp fall leaves beneath our feet



I saw her reach in the arms of my eldest, flung heavenward with 
face upturned to the sunlight


She was there in the solitary leaf gently drifting from the 
pile, unconcerned with remaining in the neat bundle
of all the others....


She was exuberantly present in this grin and in the joyous
release of leaves as they flew high and fluttered down slowly 
in the warm fall air...

I'm quite sure I felt her here as I gazed out
into the quiet of the backyard as the sun began 
to set behind one of her favorite trees...
(note the sparkle in the grass which only appeared via the shot)

So, I looked with my heart and I found her everywhere....

In the beauty present, all around me, that my eyes were missing due to the veil of my grief

In everything we enjoyed together, from the sound of crunching leaves to the
feeling of sunshine warming our hair

In the making of freckles on skin paled by days spent inside

In the taking time to capture the moment, as I would have, if we were doing life
together as we so often did

In the laughter of my dancing girl as she looked skyward and suddenly said, "Oh, Aunt Sara would
adore a day such as this...the smell of fall, the blue of the sky, the crispy leaves....remember
when...."

In the breaking of my heart in her remembering

In allowing myself to do something that was like breathing when it came to her, I found her. Shutter clicking in capturing moments, something we did seamlessly together, I felt a small piece of the empty fill, if only for a second

I saw Him, too...

In His knitting of our hearts, in His presence never leaving me as I lost her, in the friends I've found because of her, in the beauty of His creation that I'll never take for granted again because I've seen it through her eyes...



.

Tonight, as the sun sets, I am choosing to give thanks in all things and for all things...even in the pain and the dark and hard.  In the messy of my heart, I choose Him...and I choose to remember and hold on to the memory that is now her.

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