It Start with Grace, the Love I Still Carry, the Carving which Remains...
- blessedgrace5116
- Apr 22
- 3 min read
There are days I still don't understand how I am breathing.
Fourteen years.
Fourteen years since Addison left this world, and somehow the ache hasn’t dulled the way people said it would. It resists fading into something softer or quieter. It just seems to have settled a deeper. A carving deep inside and has simply decided it just won't leave.
I did not have the honor of carrying that sweet girl in my body.
But I carried her and I still do. And I always will.
Love does not ask for biology for it to take root. It's worth is not defined by bloodlines. It just attaches. Fully, fiercely, permanently. Addison Miller Clay carved herself into my life in a way that cannot be undone. She has carved the way I see the world. In the way I love Brenton and Brooklyn. And she left a hole in my heart so immense that there are breaths I wonder how exactly my body still functions around it. How my feet still move forward when part of me feels like forward when part of me feels like the world ceased the day she left this earth.
And yet...here I am.
Still breathing.
These days, there are times out here among the goats, grief hits the hardest. When I am standing in the silence of the world, Addison's absence screams louder than the hungry goats. Grief is cunning and appears in the ordinary.
Fourteen years, life has continued to hold me and push me forward. These days the farm has held me. God has held me. In the early mornings when the sun rises and the animals still need my presence. The need for me to show up and face that life continues even when part of it feels like it stopped. If I'm honest, there are days I wrestle with it. Breaths where I ask God questions I don't have answers to. Moments I struggle with the fact there is a love so deep it had to paired with a loss so earthly permanent.
The words "moving on" just do not exist with me.
I believe in moving with. Moving with her memory which is etched in my soul. Memories that have defined me. A love that never had a chance to run its full course. A
constant ache that will stop letting me know how deeply she mattered.
On this farm I have realized that nothing rushes healing. Seasons of life resist skipping ahead. Growth doesn't happen overnight. Life is sitll quietly determined to push through the soil.
Grief is like that. It has no desire to disappear but only wants to become part of the landscape of my life.
Grief is not something I ever want fix or let go of. My grief is something to be honored. The depth of my grief mirrors the depth of my love for Addison and everything she was and will continue to be in my life. And I would never, ever want to trade that. Especially on the hardest days. Even in the excruciating breaths.
Addison will never be here like I would want her to be. Holding my hand as we feed the goats. Laughing at the littles practicing their parcour antics. Assisting the bringing a new birth on the farm. Her place is to be dancing with Jesus and singing songs for God.
Her hand will never hold mine until we meet again in heaven. But she IS still here. In the quiet, in the love, in the way I keep showing up. She is in me.
And I will carry her every step and every breath for the rest of my life.
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