Lucy's Blanket

Lucy's Blanket: Soft pink mohair with Shetland lace border, perfect for a princess! A couple years ago, a friend and coworker's sweet wife made a beautiful and intricate baby blanket for our daughter, Sophia Grace. This blanket- really, I love it to pieces. So much so, that I was initially afraid for Sophie to use it because I didnt want it to get ruined. As an infant, Sophie used to run her fingers through the blanket and she loved the texture between her little hands. It is so soft and delicate, and I absolutely loved it.  Well this same wonderful lady was making another blanket for Lucy. We were so excited to find out what she would come up with to ever compete with Sophie's blanket!  We wondered later if she would still be making the blanket, because as we noticed with so many, this is something that is very awkward for people to discuss and many just avoid the subject of Lucy, or avoid us, all together. She wrote to me yesterday and shared the story of Lucy's blanket. This story touched my heart, this amazing experience from this wonderful woman of God!  She writes of challenges she faced when making the blanket, and how they seem to parallel Lucy herself. But the most touching part of this story is her perseverance, and the end result of this beautiful creation. Much like our Lucy, this gift we will hold in our hearts forever.  She writes:  "I had almost finished the center section of Lucy's blanket when we heard the first bit of bad news.  I was actually crocheting when David came home from work that day and told me what little he knew.  As a sort of act of faith, I finished the center section, praying for good health for Lucy and a mistaken test.When more bad news followed, I found it difficult to think about and put the blanket away.  I was afraid there would be a blanket but no baby." She explains how she later realized we were in our third trimester and she took the blanket out again. She tells me how she changed her approach to Lucy's blanket to that of a prayer blanket. She talks of how a prayer blanket's purpose is to wrap a person in love, to remind that person that God is with them and loves them, sheltering them as a blanket shelters us from cold. I read her words with tear filled eyes and imagined our Creator hands, as a blanket around my baby girl, sheltering her from pain, from any illnesses, from complications.  The I imagined our Savior blanketing us in his arms, protecting US from pain, from worry, I imagined my Father's blanket of peace wrapped around me. She then tells me about more and more problems she had with the blanket. This woman has made many a blanket, and has never experienced these problems on a project. As I am reading her words, I think of how the difficulties with the blanket were mirroring difficulties we were finding with Lucy, and how none of this situation made any sense to us. I remember this feeling of defeat... thinking, just stop already. Just stop with the bad news, and the finding of new problems, just stop. Finally with the frustration, she decided to put the blanket away. She writes of her return to the project:  When I returned to the blanket, I was surprised at how much I liked it.  The soft mohair yarn was comforting; and the pattern was quite pretty.  I couldn't remember what the big problem had been and returned to work with joy and many prayers.  I was still praying for a healthy baby; but more often my prayers were for peace and comfort for Lucy's family. A while later, David told me about Lucy's heart problems; and I added a few tears and another prayer:  freedom from pain. I LOVE the description she gives, about the finished blanket, about Lucy:  It has a soft beauty that makes me smile, just like Lucy.  "soft and delicate, and needing a little extra care."  What a perfect description of our Lucia Faith, "soft an delicate and needing a little extra care". I pray our little girl is here for years and years, so we can tell her of all the people Lucy has touched already, and of all the people that have helped carry her mommy and daddy through all of this. I heard in a song once, that life is short, but it is wide. How perfectly fitting for Lucy, however short her life may be, it is wide in that she has touched many and God is doing some amazing things through her.  The time, the effort, the tears, the prayers... all that have gone into the creation of this blanket means so much to me, and I will treasure it always, I cannot wait to wrap my princess in this blanket made with so much love!