August 19th - Day of Hope

It's been just over a month since I last posted here on my blog. I know, I know...I said that I was going to have the whole summer to blog my little heart out. And, here I am...not posting a new blog post in about 40 days. I'm sorry I haven't held up my end of the deal, and, let me just say...I am very grateful to those of you who come and check in with me on a fairly often basis. I really do appreciate that you care enough to take the time out of your day to read what's going on with me. But, truth be told, there are reasons why I haven't come to blog in a while. And right now, most of those reasons I am not ready to share. But, I will in due time. I promise. For now, there's something that I felt compelled to write about, and, that is why I am here. 

Today is August 19th - Day of Hope. It is a world wide prayer flag project and ceremony that took place this evening at 7:30p local time (PST here in Or). It was hosted by an amazing women by the name of Carly Marie. She has an incredible website that has great information on healing, different memorial beach photographers (they write angel babies names in the sand and take gorgeous photos of it for grieving parents), information on grief protects that you can be apart of, as well as these beautiful self-care affirmations. Carly brought together 7 women who are all apart of the grief community (for one reason or another) and they all read different pieces related to breaking the silence surrounding the death of babies and children. The project itself started on July 1st and concludes August 19th. The point of the project is to craft a prayer flag that is inscribed with a prayer, a mantra, a beautiful saying, messages, names, scriptures...or whatever is relevant or important to the individual making the flag and then join the community in hanging the flag in a significant place on August 19th. The ceremony began with lighting a candle in honor of the baby or babies in your life that have gone from this earth, Carly then spoke about the event and what it means, each of the seven women read their beautiful pieces, and then Carly closed with her story about her Christian. I could go into detail about what the women who participated in the ceremony read, but, I thought I'd post the ceremony here for you to view for yourself.

Of the readings during the ceremony, there were two that struck my heart personally, and, I wanted to post the words to those here:

Quote from Gerald Lawson Sittser, A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss

"Gifts of grace come to all of us. But we must be ready to see and willing to receive these gifts. It will require a kind of sacrifice, the sacrifice of believing that, however painful our losses, life can still be good — good in a different way then before, but nevertheless good. I will never recover from my loss and I will never got over missing the ones I lost. But I still cherish life. . . . I will always want the ones I lost back again. I long for them with all my soul. But I still celebrate the life I have found because they are gone. I have lost, but I have also gained. I lost the world I loved, but I gained a deeper awareness of grace. That grace has enabled me to clarify my purpose in life and rediscover the wonder of the present moment."

Here's  prayer flag I made for my friend MMT:

I actually added a 9 x 12 green backing to this (same green as the letters and cross) and wrote words like "courage", "love", "family", etc on it for her <3

Here's Jeslyn's candle, lit tonight in her honor:

Mommy and Daddy love you bear <3