Grassy Crossroads

I'm reading a book right now. This is a rare occasion for me as I rarely have time to read with 5 kids at home. I've saved my reading times for downtime at work. The book I'm reading is titled: My Sister's Keeper. I'm really excited about this as the movie is coming out very soon and I just love to compare books with movies. I will surely be dragging my husband to this one!

Anyhow, I'm only in chapter three but I read something in there that spoke to me in an indescribable way. I had to go over and re-read it several times. It really hit home and it made me want to blog about it. This is what is said...

"I think there are crossroads in our lives when we make grand, sweeping decisions without even realizing it. Like scanning the newspaper headline at a red light, and therefore missing the rogue van that jumps the line of traffic and causes an accident. Entering a coffee shop on a whim and meeting the man you will marry one day, while he's digging for change at the counter. Or this one: instructing your husband to meet you [at the hospital], when for hours you have been convincing yourself this is nothing important at all."

Immediately, I thought of our Emily. And I thought of those first few days in our new home. Excitement was an understatement for the feelings we were experiencing those first days. We quickly started the planning and the design of our empty backyard. At first, we had been unsure on whether to lay the concrete patio the whole length of the back of the house or just under the sliding glass door. In the end, we agreed on only having patio near the sliding door. Little did we know, the decision we made at that time was a CROSSROAD, we had no idea what influence and impact it would have on our future, and on our little 2 1/2 year old's life. Later that year, while mom and dad were at work, Emily fell out the second story window. Rather than landing on concrete, she landed on wet, soggy grass that had just been watered, cushioning her fall even more. Those two decisions... #1 where to lay the concrete and #2 what times to set the automatic sprinklers at, were our crossroads. They altered our lives, unbeknownst to us at the time, for the good!

Emily survived the 2nd story fall with nothing but the wind knocked out of her. Not even a scratch! We always tease her and tell her that she was trying to fly with the angels and instead they caught her in mid-air and guided her to the ground. Three other children that we know of have also fallen out of 2nd story windows, one of them, the one who landed on cement, did not survive. I could not imagine losing a child. My heart aches for his mother! I think that it was more than a simple landscaping decision for Miguel and I. Something else, Something bigger, Something or Someone Greater, had a hand in it. Still broken but in place, is the screen that failed her. We refuse to replace it. It serves as a constant reminder of what could have been.

Life would DEFINITELY not be the same without this little girl in our lives!