The power of a sound

Today I heard it again.  And, just like every other time, it stopped me dead in my tracks.  My heart fell somewhere deep inside of me, and right there on the sidewalk surrounded by people I felt completely alone and desperately fought the urge to vomit.  It was the sound of a helicopter flying overhead.  

Even now, three months later, as I take in my daughter's sweet smile with her tongue between her lips, those chubby cheeks and that double chin, her big, bright eyes so full of light and life... Even now that sound causes a gut-wrenching pain, a pain that only a mother whose baby has been taken from her arms in the precious moments after birth to be whisked away to an unknown future so full of uncertainty can fathom.  A rush of emotion... Fear and sadness and anger and worry and disbelief... Floods my soul for a brief moment as that sound blasts me back to the birth day of my precious miracle baby.  

But that moment passes, and I'm in this moment- this moment in which that unknown future is now a miraculous present, a present that I get to embrace every minute of every day with awe and gratitude and joy, praise God!