It happened. I don’t know how, but all of a sudden I was grieving again. Not the type of grief I had pregnant. Not the pain I felt when I saw people make faces at my boy in walmart. Not the pain I even felt when I read about tv shows who make fun of children with clefts. This was an incredibly different kind of grief. And it hit me like a tidal wave 3-4 weeks before Shane’s surgery.

I was in love. Big time goofy love. 1^st time parent goofy love. The kind of love that annoys your friends. I could not stop taking pictures of that sweet smile. That sweet imperfectly perfect smile. You see Shane spent the 1^st 2 full months of his life crying. Not joking 2 full months of nothing but screaming and sleeping. When I went to his 2 month appointment with his pediatrician she looked at my ragged tired self and asked how he was doing and I sobbed. Big ugly tears. I hated colic and I hated clefts. This was so hard and I didn’t know what to do. We were paying an arm and a leg for special soy formula and he was still crying 5-7 hours a day. Have you ever been with a baby who cried 5-7 hours a day? Its enough to drive you mad. I was going crazy. And then she said these magical words that killed me. This is NOT normal. Something is wrong. This isn’t colic. This isn’t cleft. Something is wrong. More big ugly snotty tears. She hugged me and held me and told me “mom we are going to figure this out.” She made a quick call to a GI doctor and had an over the phone consult for us. 2 prescriptions later and another new formula later (this one was double the dollars of the very expensive one we were already buying) we figured out our boy has a dairy AND soy allergy. And just like that he was a new kid. A brand new kid. And a week or 2 later he gave us a smile. Not a little tiny baby I have gas and grinning in my sleep smile. But a hi mom there you are I love life and this new million dollar formula makes me feel so nice smile. And I fell. Hard. Fast. Mush.

And then it hit me. A few weeks before his surgery. We toiled in prayer over this. We wanted so badly for this to go away and not be happening. We didn’t want to walk this road. We didn’t want our baby to go through this. And now it was ending. And so was this smile. And I grieved. I grieved hard. I loved this smile. Where the world saw imperfection and something a little “weird” or “messed up” I saw absolute perfection. I mean all of my children are beautiful, but I was just so smitten with his smile. And now a surgeon was going to change that forever

At our pre surgery consult I jokingly asked the surgeon, “do we have to fix it?” he laughed (probably remembering our first meeting when I was pregnant and I cried a lot not wanting this to be real) and said, “Well I would suggest you fix it before the prom.” I laughed too pretending I had only been kidding, but truthfully I was serious. I did not want to “fix” him. It was not just the idea of my 3 month old going under anesthesia or having surgery that required an over night stay in the hospital. (I would freak out about that later). It was the idea that this smile that just melted me was going to be gone. Forever. I just could not deal. I took 1000 pictures from every angel. I blew up my instagram in case you know the world was as worried about missing his smile I was and I cried a lot.

And then I realized that the Lord had answered my prayers. I had worried so much over whether or not I would think he was cute. Would I love him like I did my others? Was I just this vain terrible mom who only cared for outward beauty? I prayed my whole pregnancy, Lord let me love him inside and out. This was good because the Lord dealt a lot with my vanity all those month. He showed a glaring plank in my eye and showed me where my priorities lied. But here right here it hit me. He had answered my prayer and I did not even realize it. He hadn’t just made my child’s face bearable to look at. He made me big time in love with it. And I was going to miss that wide smile. I loved the way his lips flared out whenever he smiled. The smush of his sweet little nose. And next week everything was going to change.

Thank you Lord for walking this road with us. Thank you for changing the definition of perfect in my heart. Thank you for giving me your eyes and not the world’s. Now help me to trust as we walk these next steps. Help me to trust that the “new” smile will be just as perfect to my heart. Thank you Lord.