11 months ago...

"There is no despair so absolute  

(indescribable pain, indescribable peace)

as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow,

(naming our baby girl)

  when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed,  (one day I will testify!)
 

to have despaired and have recovered hope."

(it's a Gal !!)

--George Eliot

I  recently came across this quote.  I read it and thought to myself-- SO true!   I immediately thought how it so poetically described our last 11 months.
I broke down each phrase of the quote followed by parenthesized links to previous blog posts. 
If you are new to my story,  click the above links for a small summary.

First came despair.   

Losing April was our first great sorrow.   Perhaps the pain of losing her was second to the immense fear I held that I didn't know how to live life after loss.  What if I couldn't move past it?  What if I dissolved into a disaster of a woman filled with bitterness,  emptiness, and anger.   What if I turned my face from God or believed he turned his face from me?

I did not know what it was to have suffered and be healed.

As the weeks went on I learned and experienced much.  The ways, shapes and forms that healing comes.  But also the ways,  shapes and forms grief over our loss that still remains to this day.  

In what surprised me as a relatively short amount of time,

God gave us a gift to recover our hope.

I did a bit of research,  not a lot but some, about the person who wrote these words.

She wasn't a George after all,  that was her pen name.  Her given name was Mary Ann Evans and she denounced Christianity.   How she must be rolling in her grave knowing that the beautiful words she penned so long ago speak to me only of Jesus. 

I don't say that to be condescending,  I just love, love, love it when I come across something so full of truth!!!

11 months have passed and our story  still beginning.
What I'm realizing now is-- that it always can be...beginning.