To my dearly loved and deeply missed Jennie girl: I love you. I’m finding it hard to believe this is your 8th birthday without you here to celebrate. On that first birthday without you, I just couldn’t imagine doing it again and again but here I am/we are doing it for the 8th year. And I think for the first time since that awful night, I’m not dreading Thanksgiving Day. I have a deep peace, a knowing that where you are, someday I’ll be there with you and yes I’m longing for that day but I’ve been learning a lot recently about what it looks like to live out of God’s abundance and not my scarcity. I’ve learned that I can feel the grief, pain and heartache of missing you yet still feel gratitude for all that Papa God has been to me and has done for me in this journey. One feeling does not negate the other and neither do I have to feel one or the other. There is room in my heart to feel both. I’ve also learned that there’s nothing good or bad about how I’m feeling. It simply just is that- the feeling/emotion I’m experiencing in the moment. My value and worth have been decreed by God not how I’m feeling. And to be with God I have to identify what’s true because that’s where God is. God is true and present. Right here. Right now. But I’m still looking forward to the day that I can stroll over heaven with you and until then I will keep learning, keep experiencing Papa God and His love.