In this frenzy of a summer, Elena’s birthday has snuck up on me. My girl is 15. FIFTEEN! I can’t even begin to unpack how it’s possible that I have a fifteen year old child, and how I’m not sure where birthdays 2-14 went, but I can reflect for a moment what it means to celebrate another year of life, beautiful, brutal, unforgiving, unrelenting, glorious life.
Throwing it back to the beginning, to say Elena’s first birthday was over the top is a bit of an understatement. I spent weeks with my hot glue gun in hand, singeing fingertips while making loads of homemade decorations. We packed our little house with 50 family and friends on a sweltering July afternoon. I spent hours in the kitchen curating a festive first birthday menu. I felt deeply the need to honor, to truly rejoice, that my daughter was alive. She survived an unthinkable tragedy and would be able to have a birthday party. And I realize now that, in itself, is a gift. That first year of my daughter’s life I bore witness to the wisp of a gap that is life and death and that was a reckoning that awakened me to the incalculable value of each day in a way that I had never could have understood before.
15 is a miracle, a gift. Despite her suffering, the brokenness, my heartbreak, the grief that walks alongside of me every step, loving my girl into her 15th year of life is a privilege that I acknowledge every single day. Instead of choosing to white knuckle each day with the fear and dread of all that could happen, I strive to make the choice to live in gratitude for each day we are given to love someone, to see the abundant beauty of this world, to experience goodness and joy in spite of all the surrounding brokenness. And what a blessing, the gift of all gifts, to find all of those things in my beautiful Elena.
Happy birthday to our miracle, our gift, our teacher, our goodness, our heart, our shining light. We love you Laney Lou.
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