The gift

We were involved in a car accident a few weeks ago. Thankfully no one was hurt but our van was totaled. I was given the task to clean out the van prior to it being towed away by our insurance company. I quickly stored everything in a few big bags and threw them in the garage.

Last night Bud asked me for something and I realized that it was probably in those bags. Reluctantly I headed to the garage and began to sort through the bags. I stumbled upon a CD of pictures. I have no clue where they were in the van or why they were there. I came upstairs and put the CD in the computer never expecting it to work.

It did work!

And when the pictures opened there were pictures of a beach trip that we took with my dad, my stepmom, mother-in-law and a few friends in 2001.

I cried when I came on the first picture of my dad holding Abby as a baby.

I felt like I could almost reach through the screen and touch both of them. And for that moment, I was in the moment. I heard the laughter as our family sat around the pool talking that day. I heard my Dad humming to my daughter and her sweet little face lighting up. And I wanted so badly to be back in that moment again. To be back before our family knew pain, before life got hard and difficult and before we knew the pain of loss.

I am so grateful to have found these pictures, to remind me of that vacation, of that time in our life, of what my dad looked like when he was whole and healthy, of what my sweet girl looked like with her chubby little cheeks and her sweet curls on top of her head. And I am thankful for gifts from God because this is what this was to me in a very rough week. A gift.