Tying up loose ends
So I went down to the funeral home this morning to design Annie's gravestone. You can put pictures on gravestones nowadays, so we chose three to have on it, including the one above--my all-time favorite. We took it in the summer of '06 when she was just over three years old.
I also put the verse from Psalm 139:16 on it: "All the days planned for me were written in your book before I was one day old."
I used to read from a book called "What Does God Do?" to her, back before her brain injury. She loved the book and as we'd turn each page, she would ask me the same questions over and over. The last page had a picture of a baby in a cradle, and that verse written on the opposite page. And when we'd turn to that, Annie would always ask, "Is that me when I was a baby?"
Of course, I had no idea that that verse would offer me so much comfort now that she is in heaven. The fact that God knew and planned how many days she would live on this earth even before she was born takes the sting out of the brevity of her life. Because although I don't know why Annie got Addison's Disease, and I don't know why her diagnosis was missed, and I don't know why her brain injury happened in the early hours of the morning when everyone was asleep, I do know that God's purposes for her and her life were not cut short. God is sovereign over time, and her times were in His hand.