Thankful…

Ken and I stood, each with an arm around the others' waist. We watched as our two children ran tumbling, tripping, giggling through the enormous field of tangled vines and cumbrous golden gourds. Days like this. They had been a long time coming for our family.

Kyle happily slapped the dusty rind of one of the titian giants lying near our feet while Jacqui raced through the field, plucking pink flowers during her gleeful search for the perfect pumpkin.

But Ken and I just stood there. Watching. Living. Soaking the moment into our souls, knowing the priceless nature of it. I looked up at Ken with a watery smile and he kissed the top of my head and hugged me tighter.

It wasn't so very long ago that things were much different. Days when we saw nothing but the inside of four small walls of a hospital room. A tiny baby girl on a ventilator. Through her hospital window, I had seen the green leaves of summer turn color and begin twirling their way to the ground, one by one — and I feared in my heart she would join them. It was October. Jacqui's first October and oh, how I prayed not her last!

Ken and I would stand, an arm around each others' waist as we watched her fight for her life in her tiny stainless steel crib. Unable to hold her. Helpless to do anything but watch. Watch and pray. "Tell me it will be different someday," I would beg him through tears. "Tell me you believe we will get through this. I can't make myself believe it on my own."

He would kiss me on the top of the head, hug me tighter, and whisper in my ear, "It will be different some day. We will get through this. All three of us."

And now there are four. Four of us in our precious little family. All outside on a beautiful day in October doing things that I once feared would never be more than elusive dreams slipping through our fingertips.

Today there is laughter — lots of laughter. Laughter all the sweeter because it was purchased with tears. As we stood watching, Ken leaned down and whispered in my ear, "We made it."

I hugged him tighter and brushed away hot, joyful tears, my heart clicking snapshots of every precious frame of the only two pumpkins in the patch that mattered to me. We did make it. And I am so very, very, very thankful that we made it together.

This post was originally titled entitled Pumpkin Patch Pastorale and written for In The Life of a Child in November of 2007.

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