A healing day at MOPS

Monday was our first MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) meeting of the year. This is my 3rd year and my first year NOT in charge of something! I got to go as "just a mom" and that was really nice. I didn't have any problems taking Katelynn up to her room or coming into our meeting room and finding my table. It was just like last year, and it felt "normal". It was when I saw the other mommies with carseats and their new babies that I realized it wasn't going to be "normal" anymore.

You see, my first MOPS meeting I ever went to I had 6 week old Katelynn in a front pack and loved the attention I got when you have such a little baby. I only went to 3 meetings with her that small, then the group was over for the summer.
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So I had envisioned what it would be like to come to MOPS with a brand new baby just a few weeks old, to have other moms want to come see/admire her, hear them ask "how old is she!?" and know that my friend Heather E. would be waiting for her chance to snatch her up! (she has a baby addiction and will hold any baby she can get her hands on! :)) It was that moment I realized I wasn't getting the chance to show my baby off like I had planned and dreamed about. At the same time a friend came up and put her hand on my shoulder and asked "how are you doing?" I replied, "I was fine until I saw the babies" and that was all I could get out as the tears took over. I later had to explain to her that it wasn't that I didn't want to see babies, I'm still a mom, I love to see babies! (who doesn't!?) But this wasn't how I had envisioned coming to this MOPS meeting...empty handed.

During the meeting they had the moms that had babies over the summer break come up to the front for a special little gift and they included me, which felt very honoring to Kristen and me too. Although Kristen wasn't a new MOPS baby, she WAS born, and I DID have a baby....now I just have an angel. It's been hard having had a baby yet losing her so quickly because there wasn't much time for people to offer their congratulations on her birth. (We didn't get much time either to celebrate her birth, which was kind of what we did at her service, but the event still happened because of her death.) Having her birth recognized and honored like that was very healing. I too forget the joy that her birth brought us in the midst of the sorrow that her passing has brought.

The rest of the meeting went really well. There were lots of moms coming up to see how I was doing, some were even surprised I was there at all. But I couldn't imagine NOT being there! I need those ladies, those moms. I love my table of ladies that I am sitting with and I am really looking forward to getting to know them this year.

At the end of the meeting my friend Jen shared with me that although my heart was breaking over not being able to show Kristen off at MOPS, that she WAS being shown off, admired, passed around and held in a way that our MOPS moms could never compare. (sorry, ladies!). :) And although that made me cry some pretty big tears, what comfort it brings me still!

I will continue to grieve this loss as moments and events come and go not how I had envisioned them, crying "this isn't how it was supposed to be". But I have to remember that those events and moments ARE being played out in a way that I could never imagine!
1 Corinthians 2:9 (from the message)
No one's ever seen or heard anything like this,
Never so much as imagined anything quite like it—
What God has arranged for those who love him.