Forgiveness- A Blog by Cassie

Today marks the nine-month anniversary of our accident. It happens to fall on a Tuesday. It was frightening as I was getting ready for work this morning and I realized the date was approaching. I thought, It can’t be today, it can’t on a Tuesday, it’s never on a Tuesday. Sure enough, it is on a Tuesday, and it is today.

I have been struggling this past week with an assortment of thoughts. In some ways I have forgiven myself, but I cannot fully. The one person I have realized that I need forgiveness from cannot tell me those words because she is in Heaven. I have been praying and asking for some sort of sign that she does. Honestly, I wish she could snap on her big fluffy angel wings, fly right down here, sit on my lap and say, “Cassie, I know you didn’t mean to. I slipped away so quickly that you would never have been able to prevent what happened.”

Sometimes I lie in bed and think, How am I able to move forward, how can I just move along my day today as if it did not happen. How? Even if I have thought about it over a 100 times in the last 24 hours, how can I? It is definitely a form of self-esteem abuse. Punishing myself? Maybe. Do I want to? Yah, maybe sometimes I do. It is easier to do that than to realize it’s been nine-months since I ran over and took the last breath of a teeny toddler I adored.

There are some specific details about the accident that I am writing in this upcoming book of ours. It was decided by Brynn, I and the author helping us, Shey Stahl, that it is important to tell the whole story. Nothing to diminish the beauty of Rowyn or hurt her family members, but for me it is specific conversations. Things that were happening all around me that day, things I was feeling, things I was seeing, and most of which I cannot get out of my head a lot of times. As we met on Friday with the author and with our RFR team for a meeting, I had just completed writing that very difficult chapter from my point of view. What many people may not realize is that Brynn and I were not together during much of this commotion, so it has to be written by both of us. I cringe at the thought of her reading my version of events. I know it will be hard for her, it was so hard to write. It isn’t that long of a chapter and it was written during a couple of hours with several breaks. Reading back over it when I had completed it was not an option for me. In fact, I sent it straight to Shey for review, and read back through it for the first time last night. It’s nothing I don’t already know, feel, see and hear in my head. But reading it from my own words on a piece of paper is a much different feeling. As difficult as it is, it is freeing.

On Sunday at Church, our pastor was discussing Luke 22:31 where he talks about Satan desiring to have you and sift you as wheat. Pastor Jim described this sifting as bringing all of the bad to the surface and using it to steer you off your path, further from God and closer to bad. Whatever that may be for some people, but self destruction is my interpretation. Which could mean a multitude of things, even self esteem abuse. It made me realize, that a lot of what I have been feeling is the Devil trying to prey on my biggest weaknesses. Guilt and Fear. I cannot let him sift me as wheat. On days when I try to understand this all more, try to stop the horrid thoughts from seeping into my head and pray for that one piece of forgiveness, I will still keep going. Even if I never see those fluffy wings sitting on my lap.