Happy Birthday Amanda!

Tonight, I want to say thank you to everyone for all the messages and birthday wishes for our sweet girl.  The outpouring of love and support for our family today has been overwhelming.  Amanda's birthday was filled with precious memories, time spent with family, her classmates, and a beautiful dedication ceremony for a memorial for Amanda on the Grace Academy campus.  (More on that and pictures to come soon.)

I find myself at the end of today exhausted, worn out both physically and emotionally.  There was so much emotion, both expressed and held in, that I feel completely drained.  The one thing that keeps coming to my mind tonight after this day of emotional overload was from this morning at the dedication ceremony.  Our new Head of School at Grace, Dr. Diener, shared the following scripture with the student body:

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

We are grieving, but we have hope.  I can not stress how much that comforts my broken heart.  

"We grieve, but we grieve with hope because of Christ's work and the eternal life that we all will share."  ~ Dr. Diener


Here's your cake baby girl, just like you wanted.  Happy Birthday Amanda.  We love you. 

We've decided to choose a picture from each year of her life for her birthday cakes.  Brandon and Amanda's relationship was a special one.  I love this picture and the proud look on his face.