Day 39: Home

This will be my final attitude of gratitude entry.

Our precious Shiloh went home to his Heavenly Father yesterday. Yes, we had a baby boy. A beautiful, healthy boy. 2.9 lbs. 13.75 inches long. One hour he was with us, the next he was not. There is not an explanation.
There is no blame to assign--no judgments to be made. No answers.
'the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.'
-Job 1:22

I don't know why this happened. What I do know is that Shiloh has changed more lives and done more good in his short existence than many of us do in a lifetime. And I am grateful for that. I'm grateful for the lessons I have learned, grateful for each of you, grateful for the six weeks God gave me. Our hearts our broken, but we know that this is not the end--this is just the beginning. We are not the first to walk this lonely road, and unfortunately we are not the last.

So we will take it a day at a time. We have been practicing for six weeks. There are some inevitable dark days ahead, but that doesn't diminish the light of this precious soul we were privileged to know. I feel like the excerpts from the following talk capture our feelings perfectly.

"How fragile life, how certain death. We do not know when we will be required to leave this mortal existence. And so I ask, “What are we doing with today?” If we live only for tomorrow, we’ll have a lot of empty yesterdays today. Have we been guilty of declaring, “I’ve been thinking about making some course corrections in my life. I plan to take the first step—tomorrow”? With such thinking, tomorrow is forever. Such tomorrows rarely come unless we do something about them today.

My brothers and sisters, may we resolve from this day forward to fill our hearts with love. May we go the extra mile to include in our lives any who are lonely or downhearted or who are suffering in any way. May we “[cheer] up the sad and [make] someone feel glad.” 11 May we live so that when that final summons is heard, we may have no serious regrets, no unfinished business, but will be able to say with the Apostle Paul, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.”

We love you. We thank you and appreciate your continued prayers, support and love as we try to go forward with our lives. Lives hopefully that will be lived in a manner that will make us fit for the privilege of our children's presence in the world to come.

This story is not a tragedy. Our happily ever after will come. We just have to get through the intermission.