Heaven Day, fingernails, and rainbow colors

Dearest Makiah,

I remember those first few days after you left us.  Time moved so excruciatingly slow.  We had never been apart more than a night or two.  Every second without you was swallowed up in missing you.  I couldn’t imagine how I was going to survive for years- a lifetime- until I was able to hold you again. And the tears and the minutes dripped by so painfully slow.  

Now I can hardly believe it’s been 14 years!  When I look back it seems as if I stepped on a bullet train with the days and nights of diapers and hair bows and bedtime kisses from all your sisters whirring by in a blur.  It’s so different now with all 4 of your sisters in the double digits.  Some people dread the teen years, but I am loving middle school mom life!  We share movies and cookies and all the late nights I will let them have.  They love to come on early morning mommy dates for fancy coffee or donuts.  No one is playing hide and seek in the racks when we go shopping- my favorite sport!

One thing that hasn’t changed though, sweet Makiah, is your Dad’s heart for missions.  We are taking a bit of a leap this year and going on a mission trip as a family.  We will be giving out food, sharing Jesus, praying with the sick, and playing with children at an orphanage.  Several weeks ago I was trying to decide what we could do with the children there, and I stumbled on a picture of a missions worker painting fingernails.  Your sisters love to paint nails so I thought that was perfect!  

As I was packing this week I opened the Amazon box of assorted nail polish colors I had ordered, and it hit me.  They were rainbow colors.  Like you asked me for that last weekend.  Rainbow colors… like we have painted in your memory all these years.  Now I’m packing them to fly across the world so your sisters and I can paint the fingers and toes of little girls who don’t have a mama that can.  

And I’m sitting there in the floor staring into that package full of bright colors.  And I feel the finger of God.  In that moment I know only He could orchestrate this.  The timing. The random idea I saw on Facebook.       The sparkling colors arriving just before your heaven day.  It literally didn’t click in my head until that moment.  

It’s as if I was opening a gift.  Almost like a note from heaven that said I see you, and I am ordering your footsteps.  I am trustworthy.  I am good.  

I needed to hear that Makiah.  I believe it, and I declare it. But going places where I am completely out of control is hard.  It seems that when you left, the one thing I should’ve learned is how little I actually control…. Even when we are close to home.

So as I write my heart is sitting with my palms up.  Fingers open.  Not clutching on.  Breathing in the moment of that gift and choosing to let go with the exhaling.   To trust.  To step out.  On painted toes. To reach my hands across the ocean and paint more little toes.  Wherever He directs us to go.  

I’ll be thinking of you Makiah.  And perhaps the Lord will let you see.  I know your heart would smile!

Love always all ways,

Your mom

Big Sister to Be shirt