This is Joy.

April 20, 2010 By Kelle

In doing some writing today, I came across this post I wrote on my birthday last year, just three weeks before our girl entered our hearts:

It’s taken me awhile to grasp it all, but I have finally arrived at the grown-up place of life-is-what-you-make-it and there are lots of things in life we go through that aren’t comfortable or ideal, but they could be so incredibly worse, and a simple life of comfort does nothing to change us, mold us, make us into better, stronger more beautiful versions of ourselves…

I have been reminded so much these past couple weeks of just how wonderfully blessed we are and the older I get, the more I embrace change as opportunity to learn just what I am capable of.

I am capable of so much.

…and I am excited at the opportunity of new challenges, more love… Perhaps I had been planted for too long and this little bit of discomfort will challenge me, in my thirty-first year, to push myself more toward new chapters in the story of our life.

They will be good chapters.

The last few days have been such a snowballing of emotions and contemplations and yes, hormones, to settle me into a contended place of so-be-it. Life flows on, and I want to experience every tide, every wave, every calm with purpose.

And, as I read that today, I couldn’t stop crying.
I can’t believe I wrote that…just weeks before the night that changed our lives for good.

Obviously, this sort of change in one’s life causes months of reflection and, although life has moved on so perfectly and regularly for us, there are those mornings in the shower where I’m deep in thought, those drives along quiet streets where I contemplate it all, those nights where I lie awake and take it all in.

And the conclusion I come to is…

Thank you, Nella.

You have stolen my heart with your almond eyes and your soul that twists me in two sometimes. Thank you for changing me. For opening my heart to learn more about the world and the beauty that’s out there.

Thank you for teaching me to love–truly love–not only you but every blessed thing I’ve been given.

Thank you for challenging me–to accept fears and hardships and to use them to make me better.

Thank you for giving me time that night just weeks ago…for loving me through the pain…for waiting for me to come along on this journey with you. Thank you for holding my hand as I walk with you. I know there will be challenges, but I also know you’ll always be my side and that in itself makes any pain seem to fade.

Thank you for setting us straight. A little sieve, you are, straining out the unimportant, the silly things in life that so often distract us from what really matters. You will forever be our filter and with you, what’s left in the end is us…our family and our love.

Thank you for opening my eyes to a new kind of perfection–that which is good and beautiful and pure.

You bring nothing but joy and hope into our home, and I can’t wait to see where you will take us. Our bunny. Our sweet Nella Wafer. Our Girl.

I don’t know if it’s birth hormones giving a last hurrah before they settle where they belong or what but today, my heart is seeping with love and gratitude for the change that happened in our lives twelve weeks ago.

Yes, I am capable of so, so very much.

And, in twelve weeks, we’ve managed to show the world that this?
This is beautiful.
This is joy.