Why Joy

The last few weeks have been hard. I haven’t been 100 percent myself. I’m present. I have been at events. I get through a day. I smile, and laugh. But everything just feels heavy. I know what is approaching. And as much as I want to forget it. I can’t.

I don’t want to remember the day I lost my baby. I don’t want June 24th to have a significance. I don’t want it to happen. I just want to wake up and find out it was all a terrible joke. Yet everyday I feel further from that truth. And everyday I feel a little further from her.

Our life is very distinctly divided. Life with Melina and life without our physical Melina. Yet not one day of my life have I gone without talking about her. Not because I’m stuck, not because I can’t cope. I talk about her because she is mine and always will be. What is becoming harder is that there are more people in our lives as our girls grow that never physically knew our Melina. Her stories aren’t always as present. Not because people won’t talk about her. But because she isn’t here and they weren’t given the gift to have met her.

Do people have to meet her to know her? Did they have to see her crazy ways to know her spirit? I don’t know. What I do know is today my heart aches. Today I’m tired of all tragedy. I’m tired of the sad. I’m angry for all of it. Today it was raining and I ran outside. Looking for a rainbow. There wasn’t one, and I had a moment where I was just angry. And I thought to myself this is all just stupid. Why would we ever say Choose Joy.

And right then, as I was standing in the middle of my driveway with an umbrella in the pouring down rain with tears, I could hear her saying, “It’s Joy because you don’t choose the sad. You don’t choose the anger. You can’t stop the tragedy, but you can Choose to find the Joy. Joy is always a choice” …Thank you Melina

People don’t have to hold my baby to know her. They didn’t need to have physically seen her crazy Cheeto choices to know it’s never enough. They didn’t have to see her in Target every Friday living her best life to know she could shop. They didn’t have to know as she was dying how much she cherished her sisters. They can see that in her sisters smiles. They see it in their rainbow hair ties. They see her love in their secret fluorescent green Cheeto sliding shorts. They see Melina every time myself or her dad show up. Because every day that we choose to keep going, every day that we Choose to find her Joy people get to know her.

I know I will never understand this on this side of heaven. I know that sometimes, especially on the 24th, the Joy will seem very far. And my Melina will feel farther. But I know, and I trust that I if I keep showing up, If I just keep talking, I will be reminded that my baby may not be here physically but her presence is so much greater than even I know. And sometimes I just need the reminder to Choose Joy because I can, and because Melina wants me too