An Unexpected Journey

In my dream I am playing happily with Makiah by a river when the sky begins to darken and swirl.  I scoop her up, and we run to the nearest building.  There is an empty desk inside the stark office and I hide her under the desk along with her two best buddies.  I tuck pillows around the three of them and over their heads to keep them safe.  Outside the menacing clouds have begun to form twisters.  They reach down from the sky like whirling, random fingers of destruction.  Somehow I feel the little office is not safe enough.  In my dream the children become tiny, and I carefully place the three of them in a box.  I grasp the box tightly to my chest, and I begin to run.  A relentless tornado has decided to follow me.  Wherever I turn it is there, doggedly pursuing me.  I run with all my might- like the wind- clutching my little box with its precious cargo.  Finally, I seem to have evaded the finger of destruction.  I run...

Outside the sky is grey and dreary.  I feel it should rain torrents today.  I think the whole earth should cry out in grief.  I feel my heart pounding in my head.  My eyes will barely open, and I think no more tears can possibly come.  Maybe I will stand in the rain and borrow the tears from the sky. I look down at sparkly pink toes, and they are lonely.  Makiah, our last Sunday together you spent the morning in bed with Mommy (because I am on bed rest).  We ate fruit loops and snuggled.  We practiced drawing your letters and painted our fingers and toes.  You wanted rainbow toes, but I didn't have the colors with me.  I promised I'd paint you rainbow toes later.  Once we were all pink you said, "I got an idea!  Let's put sparklies over the pink, and you have to do it, too, Mommy, so we can be twins!"  You are such a princess!  So pink toes became sparkly toes.  We giggled and hugged and admired our matching fe...

In a single second my life has been radically altered.  My precious gift from God, sweet Makiah Kaitlyn, has gone to be with Jesus long before her time.  I know in my heart that she is happy, but my arms are so empty... my house so dreadfully quiet.  I feel at times that a horrible blackness has enveloped me.  I feel as though my insides are screaming.  I am clawing and fighting to break out of this torturous body- to escape from this oppressive reality, but I cannot escape.  The dark anguish leaps on me again and again.  It sits on my chest and presses against my very life breath.  My heart feels utterly crushed and broken- pummeled into a thousand pieces.  Life as I knew it has been shattered and the shards that are left are painful and sharp.  Cutting me as I try to walk through them.  This is the valley of the shadow of death.  How dark is that shadow! Her room is perfectly untouched.  All of the dolls in her dollhou...