Remembering our Darling Little Hero

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. John 15:12-13

Today was the one year anniversary of quite a few things:

-the one year anniversary of when Rachel's water broke and our lives were forever changed
-the one year anniversary when little Rachel became one of the bravest girls in this world and started hanging on for her dear life for 5 more weeks to save her brother's life
-the one year anniversary of when we started asking so many of you to start praying for us and so many of you did and we cannot be more grateful or more humbled by all of your prayers
-the one year anniversary of when a lot of miracles started happening because of all of your prayers

We spent the day honoring Rachel's memory. It was a quiet day for us. Jong and I took the day off and stayed off of the internet for most of the day until a little while ago (which is quite a feat, especially for Jong!). We spent the morning playing with Isaac and then went out for a nice lunch with each other. We then got some balloons and came home. My mom, Jong and I then each wrote a little note to Rachel (and Jong also wrote one from Isaac to Rachel). In the late afternoon, my mom, Isaac, Jong and I headed outside onto our deck with the balloons. We prayed together and then we released the balloons in memory of Rachel. The weather was beautiful as you will see in the video and the pictures below.




We are also doing a few other things to honor Rachel's memory. First of all, we are lighting a candle for a little while each night until Isaac's and Rachel's birthday on April 4, 2006. We started to do this tonight as a way for us to remember the brave 5-week fight Rachel fought to allow us to have Isaac home with us today. We will also be donating to National Park Service's Cherry Blossom Tree Replacement Fund to have a cherry blossom tree planted in Washington, D.C. in Rachel's memory later this spring. I am still coordinating this and will let you all know more details once its arranged. I also started a new March of Dimes band for Rachel to honor her upcoming first birthday - Rachel's First Birthday March of Dimes Band.

I want to share something I wrote a little while ago. It is taken out from the end portion of a testimony I shared back in January regarding my infertility and loss journey.

Why?

I still hurt a lot and I miss Rachel terribly. Sometimes I think isn’t it amazing that after going through infertility, we had to go through all this as well? But the amazing thing is through out all this, God made it so abundantly clear that He is good and that He has a great plan for each of Jong, me, Isaac and Rachel.

He broke me and then He transformed my heart. I am not the happy go lucky person I was before. My joy now is tinged with bitter-sweetness but it’s a deeper joy. I am more in love with Jesus. I am more in love with Jong. My parents have been beyond amazing through out this past year and I have been blessed with more time with them that I ever thought I’d have after I got married.

In a strange way, when I think of all that God has allowed to happen in our family, I feel a little special that He picked us to go through all of this. I kind of feel like He must really love us to want so bad to make sure we stay close to Him. I mean it hurts Him more than it hurts us when we hurt.

Another amazing thing through this journey is how overwhelmingly blessed by God we have been through prayers from hundreds of Christian brothers and sisters. Your prayers did amazing things. I am not a persistent person and I am generally a lazy person. But I did a couple of things both Jong and I never imagined that I could have done. I went to the hospital every day during the 6 months except for 2 days even though I started working full time again in May. The round trip to and from the hospital was about 2 hours. I also pumped for Isaac started in April and am still pumping as he was never able to breastfeed directly even after coming home. I have never stuck with anything for this long (except for Jong) so it must be your prayers that have made me able to do this. And oh the blessings that Isaac has that will follow the rest of his life because of the immeasurable amount of prayers he has received and is still receiving.

We never imagined that we could be this blessed despite having lost one of our children and having to watch our other child suffer through so much. Don’t get me wrong, I still have my bad days, my down days, my angry at God days, my days when I get so envious of others who got pg easily/had normal pg/birth experience/had normal newborn/baby experience. But when I sit down and I am honest with myself, I know in my heart that I have been blessed beyond measure.

Before I go, I just want to share one of my favorite verses when I look at Isaac:

2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (New International Version)

9But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

We just wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you for all of your prayers this past year. Your prayers have brought us through this past year so that we can have this living miracle in our arms today:





Last but not least, Isaac army crawls: