EDD & hurt feelings

This may be a long one so put on your slippers & grab a cup of coffee. I've been meaning to post about Bryston's expected due date which was Oct 12th but things have just been crazy around here. So on the 12th I had scheduled the meeting with the Cemetery to look at headstone options since I knew I'd be up there anyway visiting Bryston.

The meeting went well. We came up with 3 options. 2 in granite and 1 in bronze. The phrase, Remembering the brief lives of you children won out on the votes so I went with that. Each has a different design on it so now the next step is to schedule a meeting with Creighton and they can pick which is their favorite. I started off thinking I'd like the black granite the best but when I saw all the options I had her draw up the sketches with the rose colored granite. It was really pretty. The bronze option color will look like the picture below. I did opt for the angel & birds in both top corners. The rest of the designs I'll wait to share until we have a final option picked out.


After the meeting I went and spent a little time at Bryston's grave. I decorated & released balloons in honor of his EDD.



Someone asked recently if the babyland's are marked. Yes, they are. The signs look like this.


Babyland 1 has a really neat plaque that I wanted to share. I thought the saying was kinda sweet so here's the picture of that too.



Babyland has a plaque with the if tears could build a stairway saying on it but I forgot to get a picture of that while I was there.

The next thing I wanted to tell you about happened a week or so ago in my speech class. We had an assignment. The teacher gave us an worksheet with a story on it that had fill in the blank spots. We were supposed to read them aloud to the class. I had filled mine out about the mosque at ground zero (that's a whole nother post haha!) Anyways it went something like this;

Thank you all for inviting me here today. When I was asked to speak to you, I was told you were interested in hearing about......Blank.....and about....Blank. And I do want to talk to you about these things. But before I do, I want to take a few minutes to talk to you about something else....you get the picture.

I hate public speaking so I was putting it off waiting for my turn. Then a girl got up (a girl in high school, most of the class are high schoolers). She got to the first fill in the blank; I was told you were interested in hearing about...comedians and about...dead baby jokes. Insert the class laughter.

*SIGH* I thought I was going to lose it. I wanted to get up and slap this girl! What in the world would make her think this was funny much less an appropriate topic choice? It was not done maliciously, she has no idea about Bryston but still, it was like a punch in the gut for me. So I sat there trying to hold back the tears. I never did get up there and give mine. I couldn't. Not after that. I just let the teacher assume everyone had had their turn. While I'm sitting there listening to the rest of these assignments and feeling lower and lower a note gets passed to me by another high school girl, one of whom does know about Bryston. Here's the note she passed;

What a sweet gesture! The woman that sits beside me, I'll call her J, is in a few of my other classes. She's become a friend to me and after class I was letting off steam and telling her how it irked me that this girl was so insensitive. And she reminded me, she's young, she didn't mean to hurt me, teenagers say & do things all the time that mystify us so not to let this get me down. And she's right. This girl had no idea how hurtful that would be to me. And then you've got the other high school girl who knew just how much seeing Bryston's name means to me. Teenagers will never make sense, so why should I let this get to me? I think I'm just over sensitive about this topic and that's my problem, not hers. I'm letting it go. It hurt me yes, but there are things said & done everyday that sting so I better get use to it.....

Then this weekend I got a text from my friend A. (I told ya this would be a long one!) She let me know that she had left me something in my mailbox. When I got home from work I pulled out a letter and 2 bead & wire dragonfly's. AWWW! Here's what the letter said in a gist;
A few years ago a lady walked up to my friend as we were talking about life. She handed my friend a beaded dragonfly and said, "I'm not sure what you need right now but I noticed your situation, and I'm giving you a dragonfly to use as a symbol of hope." And she walked away...It went on to tell about how dragonflies spend 2 to 5 years in the mud before they crawl out a dragonfly ready to fly, and once they do they can never go back into the darkness of the mud. The story teller said that the story of the dragonfly spending 5 years in the mud let her look at her life differently that she had spent too many years in the darkness & mud herself. She said that after many years her wings were wet and heavy and not yet ready to fly but she realized that she wasn't breathing in God's word so she realized that she needed to reach out to God to rescue her out of the muddy pit. Even that over the next few years life brought many more muddy pits her way her response to them was different because like Isaiah said 40:30-31-"Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall, but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on the wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." (Ring a bell? I've posted about this very Scripture several times)

The letter asks you to keep one dragonfly and to pass on the other so someone in need of a little hope. How neat is that!?! I cant wait to pass on the other dragonfly! Thanks A!