His Hand in All Things

I am sitting here, watching Jasper sleeping on the couch and thinking about some conversations I've had with Brandon and our families lately. As we were looking back on the past few years, it was never truly clear how much Heavenly Father's hand had touched our lives. But, they say that hindsight's 20/20, and I couldn't agree more.

Once Brandon and I decided we were ready to start a family, it took a lot of patience, doctor's appointments, and some medical intervention. We knew our strength was being tested, as well as our true desire to be parents. Heavenly Father knew he was sending us one of the choicest of his little spirits, and wanted to be absolutely sure that we would take care of his sweet little girl. I'd like to think that, because Brandon and I both knew that Kerrigan wouldn't be with us for long, that her health problems were given to her as a way to prepare us through the years. To lose a perfectly healthy child to the circumstances that Kerrigan succumbed to would have been an enormous shock. However, to us, having spent many sleepless nights listening to her cough and watching her fighting to breathe, spending too many hours in the ER, being in and out of the pediatrician's office on a regular basis, her loss didn't come as as much of a shock as it could have. To know that she went quickly, peacefully, and without a struggle is one of the greatest blessings that a parent can receive. If we had to watch her suffer through a debillitating illness would have been entirely too much pain. Not that any aspect of losing a child is painless...I'm just grateful that our Heavenly Father showed his mercy to our family and had things play out the way that they did.

We can also see His hand in the progression of our family. We had never planned for Kerrigan to be an only child and had decided that, if we were meant to have another child, the time would come and we would do nothing to impede it. However, we never expected it to take upwards of four years for the newest addition to our familiy to come along. But, we know now that our Heavenly Father took it upon himself to allow us four wonderful years with Kerrigan all to ourselves. We didn't have to dedicate our time to any other children; our entire world was able to revolve around her. She is such a special spirit, and I'm eternally grateful that we got those four years during which we could give her our undivided attention and undying love. Jasper was sent to us in our time of grieving to be a light in our lives and another reason for living. There are times when things seem like such a cliche. For instance, during my labor with Jasper, instead of focusing on the wonderful life that was preparing to make his entrance to the world, I was looking at brochures for headstones and memorials. Instead of being able to bring Kerrigan to the hospital to visit her baby brother, she watched over him through the photograph we had placed in Jasper's bassinet. In some ways, it felt like the end meeting the beginning...death making way for life.

There is no way to replace our beautiful daughter and the presence that she always brought to our lives, but we can feel her presence in our home. On the day that Jasper was born, I had one of the strongest manifestations of this. I have a metronome that sits on my piano between my picture frames. I never use it, but Kerrigan loved to play with it! I had gone to take a shower, and when I came back into the bedroom, I could hear a "tick, tick, tick, tick" coming from the living room. I immediately recognized it as my metronome. Now, for those of you who are familiar with a metronome, you know that it has to be manually started. Mine has a small niche that the pendulum fits into in order to stop the metronome, and the pendulum has to be pushed down and released in order to start it again. There is absolutely no way that it could have started by itself. But, there it was, ticking away, with no one else in the house. I don't know if she was letting me know that she's still here, or letting me know that the time for Jasper to come was getting closer, but I will forever be grateful for the faithful ticking of my metronome and for the precious little spirit that's running around my house.