Audrey Caroline

Last year for Christmas the hubster gave me a gift that keeps on giving...a 2year subscription for "Memory Makers", a scrapbooking magazine.

November/December 2008, issue 84, I received another gift besides the usual amazing ideas for layouts.

On Page 56, the "He Will Carry You" layout is the story of Todd and Angie Smith and their baby girl, Audrey Caroline. I swear, I have been crying over this story for the last 2 days, every time I look at the magazine while I'm trying to get some scrapbooking done.

I cannot even begin to explain how deeply the story of their lives has affected me. Please go to Angie's "Bring the Rain" blog at www.audreycaroline.blogspot.com and click on the link for January that will begin the journey. This is an incredibly sad, heartfelt, honest blog about Angie's family, pregnancy, birth, and death of sweet baby Audrey. If you click on April (the month of Audrey's passing) there are song lyrics written by Angie and the "rough-draft" soundtrack and video....amazing!!!

I feel so blessed to have found this blog. Through the Christmas season, it seems we have a tendency to focus on those we have lost and struggles we have to endure, emotionally, physically, financially. I am not trying AT ALL to make you depressed. Rather the opposite, Angie is an absolute inspiration! I consider what she has gone through in her life the absolute most difficult thing life could ever bring upon a mother. She has, through it all, maintained the highest level of faith. She is a magnificent writer and God has given her Amazing Grace to endure and share her experience with all of us.

I am completely ashamed, a terrible Christian...God has enriched my life with blessings, great and small. For my lack of thankfulness, I am so undeserving. Angie has lost a part of herself that if I were to lose, I am sure I would die. Yet she is full of praise and adoration for her heavenly father who chose her to be the mom for a baby she knew she would lose, a baby she carried for 34 weeks of pregnancy and held with the breath of life for little more than 2 hours.

All I could do after reading Angie's blog was hug my baby girl and say, "Thank you Jesus, please forgive me". What else is there to do, really? I am just so happy that even tho' I fail severely, I have a heavenly father who forgives.

Like Job of old, when faced when adversity, IF ONLY I could be the type of person who could say, "yet though he slay me, still will I praise him".

Now go get your box of tissues and prepare to shed tears of sorrow and thankfulness.