I’ll leave a place for you. Though you are not here, I will leave a place for you . . . until I see you in Heaven.

Every time one of your three little brothers was born, I left a place for you. When I look at their perfect little newborn faces and wonder how my heart can well up with so much love, I remember you and feel the deepest joy. I feel a joy unlike any other because I remember how loved you were and still are. I am thankful I got to experience that with you. Of course, there is great sorrow because I didn’t get to watch you grow.

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Every time your birthday rolls around, I leave a place for you when we make you a cake and blow out the candles and add one each year. Each year since you were born, we’ve added a new addition. Three little boys . . . and how you would love each of your brothers. They leave a place for you. We sing and we pray and we look forward to being with you in Heaven one day.

I’ll leave a space for you when I snuggle up in your memory blanket, woven together with all the beautiful clothes you wore, and grab a good book. When I go to sleep at night and remember what it felt like for you to be snuggled into my arms. When I look at your picture by our room and reflect on how wonderfully made you were.

And lastly, I’ll leave a space for you when I look at your daddy. When I look at him and I know that together we made someone so beautiful and so perfect. That he is and always will be your daddy. Apart from God who knit you together, he is the only other person who knows the depth of sorrow, love, and joy it was to be your parent. In each other, we find comfort and strength. He, too, will forever leave a space for you. Together we will, along with your brothers, each in a different way as well as so many others.

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Though we will always leave a space for our sweet daughter, we will also continue to live in joy and abundance—even more so than before. To create a beautiful legacy and bring glory to the God who created it all.

Oswald Chambers wrote, “Sorrow burns up a great amount of shallowness, but it does not always make a man better. Suffering either gives me my self or it destroys my self.  You cannot recieve your self in success, you lose your head; you cannot receive your self in monotony. The way you find your self is in the fires of sorrow . . . if you receive yourself in the fires of sorrow, God will make you nourishment for other people.”