July 3rd has been a date for us that has been steeped in meaning for the last twelve years of our lives. Actually, a bit more than that when you consider that we received the referral of Lydia somewhere around May of 2004. We received the photo you see here of the little sweetheart with Brooke Shields' eyebrows, and a pensive look just before Mother's Day in 2004. Since that time, July 3 has always been and always will be Lydia's birthday. When we traveled to China in July of 2004 to get Lydia, we were unable to spend her first birthday with her. Instead, we were stuck at the White Swan hotel watching a mega-badminton tournament and dreaming of the time two days later when we would hold our daughter in our arms.
So, the next year, on July 3, was kind of a big deal. It was the first birthday we would get to spend with Lydia! Her first birthday with a forever family. And we celebrated big with a birthday party in the park with family and friends, balloons, cake, gifts, games...you name it. And so each July 3rd was special, because we knew that Lydia had spent that first day being abandoned somewhere...alone, sweating, hungry, thirsty, and we hated to think of how that first birthday played out.
Then August 15, 2008 hit, and Lydia was diagnosed with leukemia. Six months later she was dead. And then her birthday rolled around. Anyone who has lost a child will tell you that there are two horrible dates: the day the child died, and the child's birthday. One is horrible for the loss you feel in thinking about the fact that it is the day the child died, and the other is horrible because a birthday is so full of promise, hope and happiness....all extinguished when the child is dead. It is also horrific because as each birthday rolls around, another milestone is passed...first, she would be 6, and then 8, and then 10, and then, as for us this year: 13. And the years will stretch on, and it will be impossible to imagine her at 40, when I am 71. What would she have become? Would she have gotten married? Had kids? All the the hopes, dreams, all your wishes for your child...gone. And so that birthday just sits there, waiting for you every year. It looms ahead and it looms behind. You never forget.
Fast forward to this year. As those of you know who have been following Lydia's carepage, I converted to Catholicism this year after a long journey home, a journey that really started when Lydia went to preschool at St. Mary's. Mark had been baptized Catholic as an infant in Japan. Once, I became Catholic, as two then-Catholics, we had to do a convalidation of our marriage. We could have filed some paperwork and sent it off to the Vatican, but we decided that we would like to re-boot July 3rd for our family. We asked Father Joe if he could arrange it so that we could do a marriage ceremony in lieu of just paperwork on July 3rd, thereby turning Lydia's birthday into a celebration of our marriage, our family and our commitment to one another, and re-booting the day so that it would not just be associated with something sad, but something happy, something joyful, and something that rose from the ashes of Lydia's death.
If there is some time in your life, or a moment, that is weighing you down, and you don't know how to get out from under the weight of that moment, a re-boot is a good way of turning something negative into something positive. It's like reclaiming happiness from the depths of despair, as Anne of Green Gables might say.
Henceforth, July 3rd will not just be a time to think of Lydia, but to think what we have re-claimed from the depths of despair.
God bless,
Monica, Mark, Max, Sarah-Grace, and ^^Lydia^^
.jpg)
