Today started out appropriately gloomy. Rainy, if you will.
It's been a year now since I discovered the blog world. It's also been a year since Audrey Caroline entered the world. And then she left. It was then that I started to realize that if a 3 pound, 2 ounce baby girl could make a difference in a two hour long life, a 19 year old life like mine should be making some sort of dent, you know?
Life continued to go on for me...mainly because this is what I was doing on 4-7-08. Fun things!
All the while, I started to feel invested in these peoples' lives, hundreds of miles away. Irrational? Maybe. But this story and others that it has led me to have been so worth it. Worth the tears, laughter, and prayers I never knew I could offer to such complete strangers. I've learned so much about compassion, so much about Christ through Audrey's life and her mother's determination to survive her. Of course, it is sad when Emily calls be during a presidential debate to ask me if Todd Smith is in the audience because she figures I would know.
I found Audrey's story on this day last year through a website I was looking up for a Politics, Culture and Global Media project. This site happened to be the top on a list I googled under the search title, "most popular celebrity website." The assignment was also to find "most popular political website," "most popular blogs," etc. But once I found this, I read Angie's blog start to finish, instead of doing the rest of the work. I've been putting off work to read it ever since. Like I've said before, there is just a bunch of perspective to be gained from reading about the lives of people removed from my situation. Because while our stories are so different, our God is the same. He gives, He takes away. He is to be ever praised. People like Angie give me a much better picture of what that looks like than I could come up with on my own. They make me want to know God and the hope of Christ more personally. What's more, they take time out of their busy days to spur others on towards that goal. They are a joy to know. For me, it started with the birth and death of a red-headed baby girl. However, neither the joy nor the hope stopped there. That is the miracle of this day and Audrey's life.
"And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hears and your minds in Christ Jesus." -Philippians 4:7
"But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." -II Corinthians 4:7
I wish Bring the Rain was flooded today with pictures of a pig-tailed, mary-janed, exuberant, toothy, wobbly 1 year old with cake mushed in her fists and plastered on chubby cheeks.
Instead, I thank Him for her two hours and the way He has used her to grow so many people up for a year now. I know that He'll redeem this, that all will be made well in the end. It is a power only Christ has. It's a peace only He can offer. A peace I pray He would cover the Smith's in today and continue to teach me about over time.
Be blessed by this baby girl. I sure have been.
Smith Family Story from Cross Point Church on Vimeo.
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