happy birthday, lucy!

sweet lucy would have been one year old today!  we know she is having the biggest and best party with Jesus to celebrate!  i thought long and hard about what i could write about her first birthday, and i think i'll keep it simple and just put what mark and i said at her celebration of life service below.  mark welcomed everyone, and i gave the eulogy.  we love our sweet lucy girl so much and are celebrating the fact that she was being born this time last year and came to us as an amazing gift we didn't deserve or earn!

mark's welcome:
thank you so much for joining us today to celebrate our sweet little girl, lucy.  while we are deeply saddened by her loss, today we celebrate her new life with our Savior.  we hope our time together this morning not only honors her legacy but also honors our Creator...who created all of us in His image...as psalm 139:14 states, "we praise you because we are fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are perfect, we know that full well." lucy is a shining example that God made us perfectly imperfect, and He numbers our days.  it just so happens lucy had fewer days with us here on earth but has a few more than all of us in eternity.  we are so excited that today we can celebrate her homecoming together.

jenny's euglogy:

like mark said, thank you all so much for coming out this morning to help us celebrate the life of our precious lucy! as many of you know, lucy jane rockett was born on august 26, 2015.  we named her lucy jane because lucy means light and jane means God’s gracious gift…and my what a light and gift she was and forever will be!

lucy was born with down syndrome and a complex congenital heart defect; facts we learned about her when i was twelve weeks pregnant.  we had almost her entire pregnancy to prepare for her, learn as much as we could about challenges we could face at birth and after, but most importantly get excited for her!  we knew she was going to be one of our greatest blessings, and she certainly was!  i once had a dear friend say that lucy, like all babies, was a precious gift who just came with a few more bows than typical babies have.  i have forever loved that analogy, and plus—who doesn’t like bows?!  well, over lucy’s sweet and short life, we tried to get her to not like so many bows, but like her sister, she was all about the bows!

we saw lucy for exactly what and who she was—our baby and our lucy!  she was able to come home in the typical time frame after she was born, and we couldn’t wait to start our life as a family of four!  since we knew she was quite fragile because of her heart and upcoming surgery, we tried to keep her protected from germs as best as we could, but we still took her out on adventures and our sweet friends and family came and visited with her!  we took lucy to disney world on thanksgiving and spent a few days in the happiest place on earth.  we were blissfully ignorant of lucy’s true condition, and i am grateful for that time period when knowing less was more.  

lucy had her heart surgery on december 18th , and in true lucy fashion, she had quite the dramatic recovery.  her heart was in far worse shape than any of us or her doctors knew or saw on her echos.  we were told she would most likely require a future valve surgery, but she needed to recover from this one first and grow as big as she could.  the scariest day of my life happened on christmas eve when lucy had a respiratory arrest followed by an 8 minute code.  she went onto recover from that and her surgery as best as she could, but that day was a pivotal day in our parenting and in my perspective.  

fast forward…her last two weeks of life were both the fastest and slowest weeks of my life.  lucy was such a warrior and a fighter; she gave her all and then some.  her body just decided it was ready to move on to bigger and better, and she made her end decisions for us.  lucy never complained, always fought, and brought the ultimate joy to everyone she met along the way.

i could stand up here and talk for days about what God has taught me through lucy, but i’ll try to stick to just a few more minutes or so.  lucy truly taught me more in her almost nine months of life than i’ve learned in the 28 years of mine.  

lucy taught me it absolutely takes a village to raise kiddos, and that i had better make sure i was intentional and invested in our village.  she taught me perfection can only be crafted by God but to do and give my all each and everyday.  she made me realize that when my gut—whether mommy gut or life gut—said that i needed to do something, be somewhere, say something…that i had better act on that as fast as i could.

above all else, lucy taught me that God was in control and always has the better plan.  i think it’s so important that we plan and dream about our lives and our futures…and know that when they take a turn we didn’t plan for, that that’s the Big Man saying He’s in control and He’s got us.  lucy taught me it really doesn’t do any good to think about things we can’t control.  she reemphasized that we should truly take life one day at a time… to hope for the best and plan for the worst.  

lucy was such a gift and such a light to all of those she met.  she adored her sister with all that she had, and ellie could not have loved or doted on lucy more than she did.  lucy absolutely embodied what tennyson said when he said, “it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”  i have been deeply, profoundly changed in all of the most impactful and amazing ways because God allowed me to be lucy’s mommy for her 8.5 months on earth.  

this was lucy’s adventure and we were just lucky enough to be along for her ride and be a part of her journey, but because of our faith in Jesus, we know her real adventure has just begun! ☺