Silence

Have you ever sat in the silence, maybe you can hear the wind blow quietly in the background or a neighbor's dog looking to be let in, but it is a silence you can feel? Maybe because you strain for sound a hum fills your ears but you can still feel that silence? Wrapped in a quiet world of stillness with only background noises that are so monotonous they too become inaudible. The silence almost becomes a tangible thing you grasp for.

Rocking in Bobby's glider as he drifts off to sleep, I hear his breathing growing heavy, his CD player whispering lullabies, the clicking of the glider as I rock forward than back. It is a comfortable silence. One I feel peaceful being in.

I remember my anguish as I delivered our little girl. We knew that our cries, my husband's and mine, would be the only ones we would hear. Otherwise we would be left to sit in silence with our Hannah. I remember that silence well. I remember that feeling, that cold, tangible realization of our new reality. Our cries were the monotonous background noise in an endless silence that still envelopes me. Sometimes it still causes me to shutter and strain my ears- if only to just stir up that hum.

This is our new life. We have a daughter in Heaven. That is a very heavy statement. I praise God for my daughter every day. I would do it all again just for those few moments we spent together in that life changing silence.