breathing deeply...

i heart the springtime.  i absolutely love the renewed sense of life it brings.  i adore easter vacation, the spring break.

this week me and the kids are enjoying our break, a time to just call a time out on life as we know it and enjoy a little bit of life as we love it.

i don't have a lot planned, intentionally so...sometimes i feel that while i'm busy trying to find things to fill our time, the time has passed.  so, this week we are just being.

today the kids spent the day with my parents, it was wonderful.  i went to breakfast with a dear friend, which was a treat.  ran some errands.  cleaned, organized, and really just had time for me.  it was good therapy.

while i love this time of year...memories lurk.

camryn will be nine this year.  how is that possible?!?!  but, with her birthday comes a wave of emotions that by now i should really learn to anticipate, but i don't.  they caught me today...

as i was cleaning out the kids' homework papers, bookshelf, and all things school...it caught me.  the feeling that camryn's birthday always brings...didn't know if we'd get these days.  

if i'm brutally honest with myself i had packed camryn's birthday away in the do not dream category...do not plan, do not hope, just let it be.  some years i wonder if this is the last birthday (i know that's just an awful thought), but i'm being brutally honest.  some years i wonder how it will be to watch her grow older and know that there will be many hard conversations to come over her health and just the stupid side effects that she will navigate for her entire life.  

and yet...

most of the time i find myself in the land of the living ever so thankful for camryn's life.  the life that she daily lives to fullest.  and in those moments i breath deeply...

i breath in those moments to help me through the darker ones...

because the darkness comes.  i'd love to say that where camryn is concerned i just bask in the glory of it all and rest securely in my lord's arms, but sometimes i don't.  and when i don't the darkness feels as though it will swallow me whole.

tonight is one of those moments when i'm striving towards the light of the lord's glory...knowing that He is good.  He always was.is.and will be.

and tonight i'll breath that truth deeply.