Thankful

When I wrote this line in my other blog I knew I needed to grab a cup of coffee and come sit in this special place and think some more... write some more... about who God is showing Himself to be to me.

I wrote :

I make a choice everyday to serve and love God when my circumstances seem bleak, because I want God to be made strong in my weaknesses... I think weaknesses make God excited to really show off His strength and glory.

I know I have written before about my choice to serve, love, and worship God when in the midst of a struggle. In the midst of pain. Yet, each day i learn there is so much more to this choice and that it transforms, not just me, but my whole world. This choice has ripples that I may never see, but I know they exist.

Recently, just after the loss of our last pregnancy, one of my husband's students wrote to him that she was angry with God. that this seemed cruel to her and how could He... all things I felt in the midst of our loss. Things my husband felt.

It broke my heart for her because I don't think she knows Him. That she can turn to Him with these questions. I did. I wept bitter tears and threw out a lament to rival King David. I felt forsaken, betrayed.

Yet, in my utter brokenness and heartbreak, God revealed His great strength because my weakness was great. He stepped down from a place of glory and got in the dirt with me to lift me up.

I have no "why" that I can find. They have been offered by some, but I believe there is really no "why" there is an "is" that God wants to use as refinement and glory and to show something to the world beyond myself and my family.

God is showing that He can still be glorified when there is no "why'. He is showing that the miracles are still there and the biggest ones happen on the inside. He could have healed Eden. he could have stepped in to protect and restore my pregnancy. He didn't. But He DID step in to restore my soul. My heart. My faith. Physical healing is amazing and has it's place and is NOT something He withholds, it is available everyday... the healing of a spirit is beyond what eyes can see and so rarely labeled as a miracle...but I can tell you as one who is walking it, it is so much so. In my life and soul, almost more so.

At Peace

The thoughts in my head are all jumbled and not linear or particularly intelligible but it is clear that one thing has happened to me tonight... God, the creator of all the universe, has met me in my dark and desperate place of need. He has come to sit and share a cup of tea and offer me understanding.

He has shown himself to a desperate and broken child and revealed His great love for me. Not His plan, but His love.

I don't need to know the whys as long as I can trust the love, and that trust faltered this week. Faltered and nearly shattered, but has once again been restored, refreshed , and renewed.

God, in His great love and compassion gave me the time to mourn and the time to be angry and let me pour it all out at His feet...and then he scooped me into His immense Fatherly lap and, rather than cuddle me in my brokenness, spoke to me like a woman and child of His and reassured me of His immensity and His sovereignty.

He did not let me slip into a pit of resentment, no matter how tempting, He just revealed Himself once again to me.

Poured out another portion of joy and intimacy and loved me.

I am once again, gleefully under the shadow of His wing and nestled up to Him for my comfort.

Thank you God for loving me through my weakness and showing your strength overwhelmingly.

Can scarcely speak the words

It is with a heavy heart that I write that my pregnancy has ended.

To say say we are devastated is an understatement. My mind cannot seem to reconcile this heartbreak so soon after the first birthday of Eden. This loss has shaken my faith to it's very core, yet almost despite myself, I can still see God trying to show me compassion...

The ultrasound last Thursday showed that, while I was pregnant, a baby had never formed. This is key for me at this point. Our loss is still great, visions of a sumer spent with a newborn in our arms are gone, and we mourn them. We mourn the sleepless nights and first smiles. We mourn the dreams we had for our family. Yet for me, if I were mourning another child who lived and died before I ever got to really know it, I'd be broken in wholly different ways.

I am glad I wrote so much of God revealing himself to me in the darker times in Eden's life because I need the reminders.

Please continue to pray for us as we struggle through this new heartbreak.