Psalm 118:24 "This is the day which the Lord has brought about; we will rejoice and be glad in it."
My life has been a living testimony of what the Lord has done. I got clean and sober from drugs and alcohol on December 25, 1989 and married when I was six months sober. The Lord gave us a beautiful baby boy, who arrived into the world three months earlier than his due date on August 8, 1992. Even though he was very tiny and I was unable to hold him when he was born, the Lord had given me a scripture the year before, "About this time next year, Elisha said, you will hold a son in your arms." (2 Kings 4:16.) When I was finally able to hold him, we named our son Elisha after God’s promise to me. Elisha was the most amazing child, full of wonder and joy, and filled with the presence of the Lord. What a gift he was to me and to our family, but when the Lord took Elisha home to live with Him in heaven when he was 22 years old as a result of complications from dental work, my world fell apart and the joy of my heart left this earth, leaving me alone, full of pain, sorrow and despair. Brokenness has a way of creeping in and robbing me of my joy, sorrow has a way of eroding into the daily mundane tasks in life stripping me of my strength, and grief has a way of suffocating and covering me up like a blanket pulled over my head causing me to be unable to breathe in the goodness of life. In one fell swoop, my life was taken from me and I was robbed of the opportunity to spend one more day with my beautiful gift from the Lord.
Psalm 139:7 says, "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence?" No matter where I go, there You are; I cannot hide from the Living God any more than I can hide from myself and from my pain and the gaping hole that is left in my soul as a result of losing my child. It’s only been 14 months since his death and the grief has not yet subsided; the emptiness that I am experiencing is still so fresh and raw, but there is One who can meet me right now, right where I am today. There is One who has the ability to pierce the darkness of night that has fallen on my world; there is One who is more than able to pick me up out of the pit that I have dug for myself, once again, and there is One who can soothe my hurts and pour the balm of Gilead into the giant wound that has been left as a result of having my son ripped out of my life. All I have to do is "seek Him with all my heart and He will be found by me," (Jeremiah 29:13) and that is exactly what I have done. Because there is nothing left here in this world that brings me any hope, there is no person who can see me, there is no one on this earth that can walk with me on this lonely journey, but there is One who can, and so day after day, morning after morning I search for Him. And when I seek Him, I find my Lord and my Savior who gives me hope for just one more day, who gives me the strength to get up go to work, who gives me the ability to face another day without my child and who saturates me with His love, His character, His wisdom, His presence and infuses me with His extraordinary attitude that I need to move forward and live the life that God has created me to live.
Each day, I have a choice; I can choose to be bitter about the loss of my son or I can choose to live with the hope and the joy that I will have when that day comes when I will one day see him again. And so today, I will say, this is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.
– Melody
Introducing Melody Haak..................
Melody is part of the San Diego Chapter of Umbrella Ministries. Still fresh in her grief, and yet knowing the only One she could rely on was, and is, God Himself, she has relied, depended, and drawn deeply from her God. And she started writing, putting her heart, her convictions, and her hope on paper. She began sharing with the San Diego moms, and we have asked her to begin sharing with all of us. We pray you will be blessed and encouraged as her words echo your own and you too hold more tightly to the One who gives us strength for our journey and brings beauty even amidst the ashes.
