4 and 13

Today my happy little Solomon turned 4 months old.

Today also means my sweet Lilly has been in the arms of Jesus for 13 months.

In the above picture Lilly is in the same swing that Solomon is in, in the last picture of him above.  All four of my children have used this swing.  I took this photo of Lilly just a week or two before she died.  She was playing with the angel ornament I had bought her for the Christmas tree.

Each week, Tabitha writes a short report on a different hymn as one of her homeschool subjects.  This week she choose "Safe in the Arms of Jesus."  This was a hymn I didn't recall ever hearing of until after Lilly passed away.  (See my post about it, which includes the lyrics, here.)  I just read the story and learned that the author of the hymn, Fanny J. Crosby, and her husband had had a baby who did not live long.  She would not talk about this tragedy.  She would not even tell people if it was a boy or girl baby.  Her only allusion to it was in her oral biography: "God gave us a tender babe and soon the angels came down and took our infant up to God and His throne."

What a great example of how people all handle mourning differently.  I thoroughly enjoy talking about Lilly to anyone who will listen.  Mrs. Crosby apparently couldn't bear to say a word about her angel baby.

Ten years after Mr. and Mrs. Crosby's baby died, she was given a tune by musician Howard Doane and asked to compose a poem to match it.  After hearing the tune she exclaimed it said "Safe in the arms of Jesus" to her.  And 30 minutes later she dictated the poem she had just composed in her mind to Doane.  She said she wrote the song for the bereaved, especially mothers who had lost their children.  Now I know that she understood the loss personally.

Apparently, when offering sympathy to a mother that had lost her child, she would say "Remember, my dear, your darling cherub is safe in the arms of Jesus."

What a blessed thought.

(I got the information on Mrs. Crosby from the book Then Sings My Soul by Robert J. Morgan)

Today I added a touch of Lilly to my curtains in our living room.  I washed the curtains that the previous owners had left, but wanted different ties for them.  (The previous owners had used dark colored flower print scarves as tie backs.  They were fine but "just not me.")  So I pulled out some Lilly colored ribbon from my stash, and a red and white polk-a-dotted ribbon that had come on a beautiful quilt that someone gave to Solomon and tied them on the curtains. (You can see the quilt on the back of the recliner.)  The ribbons looked just right.  :)