Bella's Service

We had a service on Saturday for our daughter, we named her Bella Rest Hamilton. I spent a lot of time trying to post this blog and realized that I can't do the service justice. It was just Julie and I, completely alone in a beautiful park. No one single person was there, it had been raining all day. We were glad. This was our time, just two parents mourning their daughter. We wrote letters to Bella and I wanted to post mine. The details of our time in the park is ours, but my words to my daughter, I want to share. I hope these speak to you as well, I hope they might call you to deeper places, that they might mean something.

Letter to Bella:

Lord you have searched me and you know me, you know when I sit and I rise, you know my thoughts from afar, you watch my going out and my lying down, you are familiar with all my ways, before a word is on my tongue you know it completely O Lord…..My sweet daughter Bella, this part of scripture gives me peace and a rest in my heart for I know that our God knew you before He put you into your mom’s womb. He knew you, your heart, he knew who you were, before you ever took your own breath. Comfort is only a part though, only a small portion of what I have felt through this time that we lost you, our sweet baby girl.

I was excited about you even before I met you, before I could see you, I was excited. I so wanted a daughter that I could hold in my arms and snuggle with, to have you sit in my lap and hold your little face in my hands. I was excited about that. I was excited to get to meet you and see what your face looked like, to see what your hands looked like, little baby hands are so sweet. To have you be a part of our family, to be a part of our little family, would have been so sweet Bella, I was excited for you to be with us.

I was excited too for Nate who would have made you such a great big brother, he would have gotten to see you grow and help you learn all of these great things he has learned. He would have thought it was fun to help you say words, to walk, to play with toys, to eat….Nate is your big brother and I am I know he will meet you someday. I hope you love him.

I have also felt hope. Hope is the thing that we get to do here on earth before we see Jesus face to face. I know that hope isn’t needed in Heaven, where you are, God is completely there with you, completely engaged and surrounding you! You get to see Him each minute of each hour of each long day there. We only get glimpses, but hope allows us to glimpse Him in ways that we can’t otherwise. Hope has allowed me to do many things for you even before I met you. It allowed me to know how much I loved you, how very much I loved you and how much your mom and I would have done to save your life! You were precious to us, and we had never met you! Hope allowed me this. Hope also allowed me to know that you were important and real, valuable and worthy, that you were lovable and a gift. Hope allowed me to experience you and your impact on my heart before you were born, Hope allowed my heart to be touched by you Bella! I would not trade those days.

I felt tremendous loss. I lost years of hearing your voice, feeling your little hands reach for me, hearing your feet run around the house. I lost years of time, yes, but years of experiences with you as my daughter. This loss was and is, will always be a huge loss, you will never be with us here. I will never see you married, I don’t get to walk you down the aisle, I don’t get to watch you grow up from Barbie dolls to makeup. I will never get to pursue your heart as only a daddy can pursue his daughter’s heart. I will miss you Bella. I will always miss you.

But let me say this too, I would not change the fact that God gave you to your mommy and I. I can’t say I wouldn’t change having you leave us, but I can say for sure that I wouldn’t change getting to know you were ours, for a very, very short time. You will always be a part of the family and we will tell Nate about you someday. We will always remember you and the day of 09/09/09, the day you left us here. I love you very much Bella, you were not lost on us, I am glad God gave you two parents who would miss you, I think its important! You were a person! You brought meaning to our lives in such a short time, you meant something to me, you truly created so much in my heart from the moment that your mommy saw the pink line……….that pink line. I was so grateful for it…..it lead me to you, and you lead me to Him in ways I had forgotten could be true. Thank you Bella for being my daughter, for being a part of our family, thank you for making a huge impact on my life and heart, you were worth it, even this loss, you were worth it.

We love you very much and I hope that one day, someday, when we are in Heaven we might get to see you and meet you. I do hope to be able to do this. You will never be forgotten little girl….I would have loved to have protected and known your heart, to have gotten to pour into your heart what I have to give, but it seems it happened the other way around for us. You matter to me little girl, you matter to me!