Pink Dress

Blessed Be Your Name

In the land that is plentiful

Where Your streams of abundance flow

Blessed be Your name

Blessed Be Your name

When I'm found in the desert place

Though I walk through the wilderness

Blessed Be Your name

When I saw the small pink dress hanging over the woman's arm as she walked up the stairs towards her meeting, I knew that it wasn't just any pink dress.

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When Jaqueline and I walked through the department store, a similar pink dress with a white sweater hanging over her arm, others may have thought she was just a mom buying a dress for her daughter. It wasn't just any dress.

We searched for white shoes that were just her size. She wasn't there to try them on, but we both pictured her little feet and knew which ones would be for her. The man behind the register was happy that he was able to provide us with just the right size. "Are they for your daughter?" he asked. He had no idea that they weren't just any white shoes...

I remember wondering what might be going through Jaqueline's mind during this outing as we smiled and exclaimed how adorable Ashley would look in that precious dress...how she might need stockings...

Did it cross her mind at all that this would be the last time she would be buying a dress for Ashley? Did she remember that just three months earlier we were shopping and buying adorable outfits that were 'just a little big' so that Ashley could grow into them?

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That small pink dress I stared at as I entered social services was one chosen out of love, fixed by the hands of one of her mothers. That small pink dress is for another little girl whose three years of life must seem just as short as Ashley's 14 months. It isn't just any dress.

Blessed be Your name

On the road marked with suffering

Though there's pain in the offering

Blessed be Your name

You give and take away

You give and take away

My heart will choose to say

Lord, blessed be your name