Till We Are Home

Isabel’s birthday is next week. This will be her third birthday since going home to the Lord. Special holidays and especially birthdays are particularly difficult after losing a loved one. And we are a family that probably over-celebrates birthdays…we just really enjoy celebrating together. So, it’s particularly strange when her birthday rolls around on the calendar because it comes with a mixture of what historically we felt as excitement leading up to her birthday now mixed with deep sorrow as we miss her. 

My sweet girl would have been 17 years old next week. 17 years old. It’s hard to fathom what Isabel may have been like at 17. No doubt gorgeous. No doubt delightful and spunky and mature and sunshiney. No doubt dreaming of the coming end to high school and what could lie ahead. 

Man, I miss my little girl.  

When we lost Isabel, we wondered how we would continue to “celebrate” her birthday and other days again. I’m not sure when the idea came to us, but before what would have been her 15^th birthday, we decided to try and redeem the day and make it special (hopefully) for our family years into the future. We decided to call it The Best Day.

The Best Day name comes (I’ll sheepishly admit) from reading a Batman comic. In an appendix to the comic, the writer, Jeph Loeb, shared insight into some of the storylines in the comic. In one of these insights, Loeb revealed that his father used to call his own birthday, “the best day”. Anyways, that’s where we got the name, The Best Day, for Isabel’s birthdays since losing her.

On The Best Day, we also wanted to redeem our “celebrations” somehow. One way we’ve decided to do this is by gift giving. Gift giving on The Best Day would be a little different, though. First, Isabel used to always proudly announce that her birthday was coming up the night of my birthday after the celebrations were done. So, from late in December all the way to late February, Isabel generously reminded us that her birthday was coming up. Nowadays, in order to continue her generous tradition of announcing her coming birthday, we decided that after I’m done opening presents, after the candles are blown out, after the cake is consumed, we draw names among the four of us to determine who we will give a gift to on The Best Day. Step one.

The next step is for us to make a gift. Isabel was such a creative girl with artistic talents all over the map. In honor of her God-given creativity, we wanted to give each other gifts that we create. We take the name of the person we are giving a gift to and think about a special gift to make and give to them on The Best Day.

Then, finally, at the end of the day on Isabel’s birthday, we give each other our gifts at the time that we normally would have given gifts to her. We figure out an order for who will receive their gift, then dramatically reveal who made that person their gift and they present it to them. 

Obviously, we’ve only done this twice now, but it is an incredibly precious time together. We’ve done our best to manage our sorrow and put our best foot forward in creating something special for each other. Sometimes, we process our grief through this act of love and think often of Isabel while doing so. We hope to continue to do this in the future, maybe with spouses that come into the family, and maybe even with future grandchildren…all if the Lord wills.

I think she would be honored by what we are trying to do.

When we lost Isabel, we desperately looked for redemption. Loss of that magnitude creates such a crater in your life. You know it won’t be filled as it once was. You know your loved one won’t come back. But, you look (at least we have) for whatever good can come out of such tragedy. 

And what better way to resonate with the gospel story that to redeem our losses? Our sin wrecked our lives and the world in such a devastating way (Isa 59:2, Rom 6:23, 8:22, Gal 6:7-8). Yet, the Lord…but God…redeems what was lost (Eph 1:7, Gal 3:13, Acts 3:18-21). 

Our desire to continue to celebrate Isabel’s birthday in a new way is our way of looking to our Creator and celebrating how gloriously He redeems the broken. It may not be for everyone to respond the same way, and that’s ok. We just found ourselves desperate for light. So, seeing Isabel’s birthday redeemed as The Best Day brings gospel light to a dark valley of sorrow. We are thankful to the Lord for His work in Isabel’s and our lives, and we will keep pressing for continued redemption of this loss…

Till we are home…