Two more weeks….I still need to pinch myself. Two short weeks from today I will be pulling in my very on driveway with my beautiful daughter in tow. This is nothing short of a miracle. I could share all the miraculous stories that we have experienced beginning  April 19^th and  leading  up until today, instead I will just save that for the movie.  Side note….I think Heather Locklear would be the perfect “Colleen”.

One of my high school friends was visiting this weekend and took many items from my apartment back home to St. Louis so I wouldn’t have so much stuff to pack. I opened the closet in my bedroom to gather all my extra bedding to pack and saw Lauren’s pink sweater hanging in the corner. My heart skipped a beat. When I was in Los Angeles I held that sweater in my hands and kept my face buried in the scent of Lauren for the first few weeks.  One of her co workers packed up her hotel room and brought me her suitcase after the accident. I desperately needed something that smelled like her to hold. I rooted all through that suitcase looking for something that she had worn. Ironically ¾ of the clothes in her suitcase still had tags attached.(like mother like daughter)

That pink sweater was a great source of comfort  to me as I spent so many days in that blue vinyl recliner in the corner of her ICU room. I can’t even imagine how many tears were shed on that sweater. Opening that closet today and seeing that sweater was yet another small triumph for me.

This week was one of our best weeks yet. Lauren is starting to show more and more signs of herself. I can’t even put into words the elation I feel when I am helping Lauren move from one place to another and she leans in to give me an unsolicited kiss or a tight left handed hug. Don’t get me wrong, we still have a long, long road ahead to get my girl back to independence but wow what a journey we are on.

I have tried to look at our road to recovery in terms of a pregnancy. (I have lots of expertise in that area) I think of  Laurens current stage of recovery as the equivalent of the beginning of the second trimester. The second trimester is when you begin to feel that precious life move inside of you? To me it is like I am watching Lauren’s precious brain begin to develop just like an unborn baby. I am beyond grateful that I am receiving this gift twice. God is good!