July 24th Here and then.....

Week Four, Day Six

Friday, July 24, 2026

Tomorrow my son turns six.

Every time I try to say those words, I have to stop.

Because tomorrow isn't just Jaxon's sixth birthday.

Tomorrow is the birthday of a little boy who now celebrates in Heaven.

And today...

today is the anniversary of the last day I believed everything was going according to plan.

Because of Leap Year, the calendar aligned perfectly.

It is Friday again.

The same Friday.

Six years later.

The last Friday before everything changed.

This morning I intentionally came outside and sat still.

The wind brushed across my face.

The birds were singing.

The air was cool—something we haven't felt in weeks after temperatures well over one hundred degrees. Today is only around eighty. The sky is covered with soft gray clouds. Not storm clouds. Just enough to soften the sunlight.

Six years ago, the sun was shining.

Today, the sky is gentler.

Both are beautiful.

Both make me cry.

The heaviness I woke up with today is unlike anything I've felt yet.

It kept me in bed much longer than I would ever allow myself.

It sent me to bed before the sun had even set last night.

I can feel grief in my bones.

Not just in my heart.

In my bones.

My body remembers today.

It remembers what my mind hadn't even begun to understand.

I don't know how I'm supposed to keep myself from replaying this day hour by hour...minute by minute...moment by moment.

Because six years ago, at this very moment, I was filled with anticipation.

Not fear.

Not anxiety.

Not dread.

Hope.

I had every reason to believe we were about to bring home a healthy baby.

I did nothing wrong.

Jaxon did nothing wrong.

We were supposed to walk into the hospital...

and then walk back out carrying our son.

That's how birth stories are supposed to end.

Instead...

our story changed forever.

COVID had shut the world down.

It was the height of the pandemic.

It was just me, Darryl, and my doula.

My parents couldn't be there.

The people who had imagined welcoming this sweet baby into the world had to wait from a distance.

I had dreamed of bringing him into the world peacefully.

Instead, I experienced one of the greatest traumas of my life.

And what followed wasn't one hard day.

It became years.

Years of hospitals.

Years of specialists.

Years of advocacy.

Years of becoming someone I never imagined I would have to become.

Mama Lion wasn't born because I wanted to fight.

She was born because my son needed someone who would.

Sometimes I think about the dates.

The numbers.

The patterns.

Saving Jaxon in November of 2020...

That same date later becoming the day Darren entered Heaven.

The anniversaries.

The birthdays.

The way everything seems connected.

Some people would call that coincidence.

I don't.

I'm a mathematician.

My Father knows exactly how my mind works.

Sometimes I wonder if He's leaving me breadcrumbs.

A path hidden in numbers.

A story waiting to be understood.

But today...

I don't have the capacity to solve the equation.

So today my prayer is different.

"God...

I know You may be saying something.

I know there may be meaning woven through all of this.

But Your daughter doesn't have the capacity to figure it out today.

If You need me to know it now...

please don't make me decode it.

Just tell me.

Make it plain."

Because today...

I don't have the strength to solve another mystery.

Although Darren made me a mother years before...

today was supposed to be the beginning of all my earthly firsts.

My first newborn.

My first tiny diapers.

My first middle-of-the-night feedings.

My first sleepless nights with an infant.

My first time bringing a baby home from the hospital.

I was thirty-four years old.

I had waited.

I had prayed.

I had dreamed.

I thought this chapter would finally be easy.

Instead, the entire world changed.

And so did mine.

Looking back now, I almost wonder if God was already weaving a safety net before I even knew I was falling.

Maybe that is what grace is.

Not stopping the fall...

but preparing a place for us to land.

Today I'm going to try to do something with all of this love.

Because that's what this ache really is.

Love.

Love that no longer has a little boy to tuck into bed.

Love that still wakes up looking for my son.

Love that still wants to celebrate him.

Love that still wants to mother him.

It feels like all of that love is sitting inside my chest waiting on a heart attack.

I don't know if I can do anything with it today.

Truthfully...

I don't feel like doing anything.

But I know what happens when love has nowhere to go.

It explodes.

I don't want my family carrying the explosion of my grief.

I don't want Nolin trying to understand sadness that belongs to grown-ups.

I don't want the people who love me spending this weekend trying to rescue me from something only God can carry.

I've performed strength for a long time.

This weekend...

I'm not performing.

I'm simply surviving.

I'm grateful I decorated Jaxon's columbarium before today.

Because if I had waited until now...

I honestly think I would have ended up lying on the floor in front of it.

And somehow that thought made me smile through my tears.

Because I could almost hear myself saying,

"Mama Lion... get up."

Not because my tears don't belong there.

But because my son deserves a mama who keeps getting back up.

Yesterday was my last therapy session before Jaxon's birthday.

My therapist and Jaxon share the same birthday.

When I realized we wouldn't be talking every day through this weekend...

panic set in.

How am I supposed to survive this weekend without talking to you every day?

She looked at me with the kind of confidence I couldn't find for myself.

"You carry me with you.

I carry you with me.

You have people covering you.

Use them."

Then she reminded me of something I needed to hear.

Strength isn't carrying everything alone.

Strength is allowing yourself to be carried.

And then...

there's my mama.

My sweet mama.

She's one of the strongest women I know.

We grieve differently.

She carries her emotions quietly.

I carry mine out loud.

But every day she checks on me.

Every day she asks what I need.

The other day I asked her for one thing.

"No fussing until after Jaxon's birthday."

She honored it.

That may seem small.

It wasn't.

It was love.

Mom...

thank you.

Thank you for standing beside me when I wasn't easy to stand beside.

Thank you for staying when I pushed you away with everything in me.

Thank you for loving me through the assumptions I made—assumptions grief whispered that I knew weren't true, but somehow believed anyway because they hurt less than facing what was real.

Thank you for never making me earn my way back to you.

I honestly think there should be an award for people who stay through catastrophic grief.

Not the people who attend the funeral.

The people who stay after everyone else has gone home.

The people who survive the anger.

The silence.

The panic attacks.

The exhaustion.

The misunderstandings.

The days when the grieving person doesn't even recognize themselves anymore.

The people who refuse to let grief destroy the relationship.

You have done that.

You have stood in the fire with me.

Six years ago today we both believed we were about to meet a healthy little boy.

Neither of us knew what the next six years would ask of us.

Today...

I don't need answers.

I don't need someone to tell me everything happens for a reason.

Today...

I just want my mom.

I want to curl up beside her.

I want her to wrap her arms around me and remind me that somehow, some way, everything is going to be okay.

I'm thankful that I still have her.

I'm thankful that no matter how strong the world expects me to be, she still reminds me that I don't always have to carry everything alone.

When I roar at her in my grief, when I come back, she takes me in as her cub.

Like lions do, she keeps loving me until my wounds are clean.

No matter how fiercely I roar...

no matter how much grief convinces me to push people away...

when I find my way back, she never treats me like I've wandered too far.

She still sees her daughter.

She still loves me.

And maybe that's one of the clearest pictures of God's love I've ever been given.

This is Friday morning.

July 24, 2026.

The morning before Jaxon's sixth birthday.

I don't know what the rest of today will hold.

I don't know how many tears are left.

I don't know what memories will rise to the surface before the sun goes down.

But if I have the strength...

I'll come back tonight.

Because you've walked beside me through this rehabilitation.

You've carried pieces of this story with me.

And somehow, by bearing witness...

you've helped me carry the weight.

Tomorrow, my little boy turns six.

Today...

his mama remembers the last day she didn't know her whole world was about to change.

ST`