Tugging

Yesterday I ran into a friend at the grocery store, she was shopping with her two youngest. At one point in our conversation her 4 yr old girl asked to be picked up so lifted her little one onto her hip. As we finished our conversation her daughter took her little hands and placed them onto her mama’s cheeks ~ grabbing her face and pulling it close to her own.

Sometimes that’s all it takes to trigger the best of memories with my girls. That little gesture had me in world wind of sweet memories of when Miss Anna was little. She used to grab my face and squeeze my cheeks all the time and she also loved to pull on my earring, which I must say drove me a bit nuts.

I love remembering what it feels like to have her cold hands on my cheeks ~ she would squeeze and say, “I love you so much mama.” I would reply that I loved her too but she wouldn’t let go of my cheeks so it always came out funny. We would both laugh.

I love remembering her little laugh.

I get asked a lot how I’m doing. My answer is always the same, “I’m hanging in there.”

Lately I feel that is all I can do ~ hang on ~  because if I didn’t I would get swallowed up by my sorrow. It is not the holidays that is bringing this new depth of sadness, but rather the distance that I feel from my girls, the distance from the little moments we have shared and the fact that there are no more earthly moments for us.

God has and will continue to bring me peace. I do rest in His word and I look forward to the day we are all together again, but right now, while I’m still here and they are in Heaven, I am feeling lost without them.

I miss everything about my old life, even the tugging Anna would do on my earring.