My living children are ages five and one, and it's hard to imagine sometimes what life would have been like if any of my other children had lived.
Naomi would have been four this August. She would have been homeschooling along with her sister, delighting us with her impish smile and drawings and sweet voice lifted in song.
Kyria would have been three this past June. Perhaps we would have enrolled her in the preschool at our church. She would have been coloring and learning her letters this year, and trying to keep up with her big sisters.
Jordan would have been two in January. He would have been toddling around the house, getting into everything and making a glorious mess.
Now, because of the time each was lost and the time I got pregnant, I would never have had all of my children at once. If one had lived, another would not have been conceived (a strange thought). But what I am realizing anew today, on Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, is that when we miss our babies, we are not only missing them in that moment when they flew to Heaven. We are missing the milestones that would have been, the hugs they would have given, the relationships that could have been, the impact on the world they might have made. And not only us, but all those teachers and scouting leaders and coaches and aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents who would have been blessed by their lives.
My daughter's Bible memory verse for this week is Psalm 118:1, "Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good." He is good, all the time, and His plan is good, even when I don't understand it. But that doesn't mean I don't miss my little ones who are in Heaven and wonder, from time to time, what could have been.