little did she know...: the too good day

April 14th, 1925
My beautiful grandmother, Marion Lorena Lyons, took her first breath of fresh earthly air.

April 14th, 2o1o
My beautiful niece, Sophia Rose McCabe, took her first breath of fresh earthly air.

Hence the need for the this is too good good day.

Mimi was so happy and blessed by the fact that one of her great grandchildren was born on her birthday. 85 years separate their lives, but one truth connects them. They were both created by Love Himself for the eternal Joy and Beauty that Heaven contains.

They were both seen from Eternity by God and were both Infinitely Love and Desired by Him. Enough for Him to see them, and decide to leave Heaven for them. And so He came for them, and He rescued them, and they both belong to Him. No one else ever could love them like He Loves His little girls, and no one celebrates the beauty of their existence like they do in Heaven.

Today is my precious Mimi’s happiest birthday ever.

many thanks to my cousin, Molly, for sharing her beautiful pictures of Mimi's 85th birthday celebration with me

She has existed for 87 years.

Her life on this earth ever since that first breath has been bursting at the seams with God’s grace and His ever present call for her to come to Him, her Creator, Father, and Savior.

And now, she has it. All that she ever truly desired is hers in an abundance that is completely incomprehensible to us who love her, but are still earthbound.

He has always been the Dreamer of her dreams, and her wildest dreams for Joy and Love have been realized to the infinite degree. And those of us who love her and remember her and miss her can be so glad on this day.

Our Mimi is engulfed in Love. She knows no pain, no suffering, and not one experience, that has not been transformed into Beauty.

All is Love and Gift. And those of us whom she went before can only marvel at the Divine Mercy upon which she so completely relied in her earthly life. We can only stand in complete awe at the Love that only desires to forgive, and to give new new life. Jesus says: “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5). He was talking to Mimi, as well as all of His children. He was talking to His beloved Marion Lorena.

He wanted her to be with Him for all of eternity, and up until the end, all she wanted was to see Him Whom her heart loved above all else. The one Who came to her in the Eucharist up until the very end.

The One Who visited her through all of her family in her last days. The one Who saw her in her mother’s womb the moment she came into being, before anyone else even knew it, and desired her for Heaven at that moment. He carried her all the way Home.

Happy Birthday, dearest Mimi. Please pray for us, who are still making our way towards Home.

Now is the moment where I try to use words to capture the beauty of life, and I watch them all slip through my fingers like the sand through and hourglass. Because it's Sophia. And words don't even know what they are talking about when it comes to this girl.

She wouldn’t be here without Mimi. To be more fundamental, she wouldn’t be here without the Grace of God. Our Savior, Who saw Sophia from Eternity, and said “She has to be mine”. And really, can you blame Him for wanting her?

And she is His. My precious, beautiful, brilliant, Goddaughter, belongs to Jesus.

And in His arms is where she will always belong. Having the privilege of knowing this incredible soul from her first month on this earth is humbling and remarkable and so trademark God.

I did absolutely nothing to earn a niece that I love like I love Sophia Rose.

He just plopped her into my lap and said “here you go, Elisa. Just because I love you”. And there she was.

I will never forget the day she was born. I was so sad to not be nearby enough to visit her in the hospital, but I darn well celebrated. It was 10 days into the Blessed Easter season that year, and I was already brimming over with joy. So the fact that my very first niece and Goddaughter was born just pushed me over the edge of happiness and beauty saturation. I skipped class, had a beer, and told every single person I saw that I had a new niece, and proudly showed off her fuzzy cell phone picture to any innocent passerby I encountered. I had some friends that had a big screen TV, and they obligingly hooked up a computer to it and put a very large and beautiful photo up of Lianna, Ed and Sophia, just a little bit after her premier breath.

And we gazed in admiration, and I bragged in true beaming-with-pride aunt fashion, and I cheersed to the new life that I was destined to love forever.

I cannot express enough what she has been in my life. Blessing is not enough of a word. She is a miracle.

A miracle that has made me cry with joy, laugh with happiness, pray with fervor, and desire to love more like Jesus. Because He Loves her truly and better than anyone else ever could, and I want to love her truly, too.

She deserves it. He’s her little precious girl, after all. And He knows just what she needs and desires. Her life is already filled with so much beauty, because she has a Momma and Dadda who are plum crazy about her. Just nuts about their first-born baby girl.