He Bends Down to Listen

Prayerfully, sometime relatively early in my journey of grief, as I am both wanting to hold tightly to all the emotions that seem to keep me in a oneness with my child, but I am also wanting to emerge from the suffocating darkness and raging rawness of my child’s death, I begin to reach for something, someone, bigger and more capable than I am, And again, prayerfully, I will reach for the hand of God – the God who wants to carry me, embrace me, and enable me to walk forward, responding to Him, even as my love and memories for my child, and of my child, remain vibrant. Even as I write this, I realize some of us were taught about the God in our religion, and He was very distant, especially when I wasn’t meeting His expectations. When my daughter died, that was the God I knew. Others though knew that God longed to walk the journey of grief with us, and He would accept our tears, even our questions, and wrap us tightly in His compassion, His love, and His care. I could choose to walk my journey with the God of relationship, the God who loves me so intensely His own Son died so that THIS God could be my own eternal Father, and the embracing God who carries me on my journey of grief. I asked the question on the website www.gotquestions.org, a favorite resource of mine when I am trying to sort through biblical truth. I asked the question, in reference to Christianity, is it a religion or a relationship. The paragraph below attempts to draw together the basics of their answer........... Most religion, theistic or otherwise, is man-centered. Any relationship with God is based on man’s works. ... Most religions are similar in that they are built upon the concept that man can reach a higher power or state of being through his own efforts. ... According to Christianity [however], God did for us what we cannot do for ourselves. ... The grace-based relationship between God and man is the foundation of Christianity and the antithesis of religion. ... “Love” speaks of relationship. ... Holiness and obedience to Scripture are important, but they are evidences of a transformed heart, not a means to attain it. ... Christianity is not about signing up for a religion. Christianity is about being born into the family of God. It is a relationship. This God hears my voice, and my prayer for mercy, as He bends down to listen to me. I can place all I am carrying in His hands, and with an emptiness that is still raw, but pure, I can tell Him, “I can’t, but He can, and I want to let Him.” And I tell Him over and over and over, especially when my emotions overwhelm me. And even though my heart still longs to listen to my child, to speak encouragement to my child, to give nurture and guidance, and sometimes, just fun! – I am learning to say “Thank You” for the gifts my God gives every day. – Bev (Related Bible reading: Psalm 116:1,2)

Acceptence

Jeremiah 10:23 “LORD, I know that people's lives are not their own; it is not for them to direct their steps.” Letting go feels so unnatural. I have worked my entire life and have made plans for myself and when something came along to change the course of my plan, I had no choice but to go with it. I have always wanted children and when the Lord presented me with a disabled child, it took me a very long time to accept his disability. It wasn’t something I had planned; it wasn’t something I had wanted, and at first, I was very angry at God; I truly thought He had abandoned me, that He was punishing me for my past sins and honestly, my relationship with Him was rocked to the core for the first year of Elisha’s life. Rather than opening myself up to the plan the Lord had for me, I fought it, tooth and nail. I had to give up my dreams and hopes for a normal child; I had to give up my expectations that one day my son would go college, get married, and I would have grandchildren. Little by little, I began to practice acceptance of what the Lord had planned for me, and it was only then I began to truly see the gift that had been set before me. Proverbs 16:9 “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps.” Sometimes losing our hopes and dreams and plans for our future is so painful people cannot come to terms with it; they never come to the place of acceptance and they become bitter and resentful, and trust me, I’ve met people like this who have disabled children and it is the most tragic thing that will ever occur. A lot of these people will never see the beauty and experience the joy of their God-given gift; they miss the wonder of their child growing up and all the Lord had established for them. I love the story of Helen Keller who at 19 months of age, an illness caused her to go completely deaf and blind. Her parents sought help for her in Boston at the Perkins School for the Blind. In that era, children like this were considered hopeless and were segregated and not allowed to be integrated into normal schools. But a tutor, Anne Sullivan, believed in her and persisted in her efforts to teach Helen to read Braille, to write and even to speak. With Sullivan’s help, Helen graduated with honors four years later from Radcliffe College, associated with Harvard, having mastered several languages. And because someone believed in her, Helen went on to receive many awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Hebrews 11:40 says “God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.” I think about those people who give up when they find out they are having a disabled child, they have an abortion or when they are born, they give those children up either for adoption, or institutionalize them into a home and they never see the beauty and they never see the perfect gift that they have been given. They will never experience the incredible joy, the absolute closest thing to perfection on earth; God’s perfect and beautiful gift was just tossed away, never to be opened, never to be held, never to be allowed in to radically change their lives forever, but instead, they run away from the blessing and the challenge instead of embracing the gift, eager to gain all the blessings God has hidden in this package because it looks too difficult and we don’t like the package that this beautiful gift has been wrapped in. And so it is like everything, if we truly believe God is sovereign and if we truly are able to trust Him in every aspect of our life and in every situation, if we would just be thankful for what He has given us, we open the door to complete and total tranquility and peace within our soul, no matter what the circumstance. – Melody

We Need Each Other

Pastor Joey, speaking in a Sunday morning sermon, highlighted the biblical principles God offers all of us as we struggle with the harsh realities of life. Stay persistent with God. Identify the need you are struggling with. Don’t attempt to bring about wellness on your own terms. Take God at His word, and take the initial steps God has for you, and then, walk forward, totally dependent on the God who wants to bring the wellness, and find the others too God has for you to journey with, others who can encourage you because they have walked a similar journey. I questioned whether or not Pastor Joey or myself, were over-simplifying. What Pastor Joey said did echo words I had written years earlier and continued to teach, especially to those broken by life circumstances. Face it – Identify the brokenness or need that is yours. Feel it – Identify the consequences of your brokenness or need. How has it affected you? How has it affected others around you? Forsake it – Give it to God in utter dependence. Ask for His leading, guidance, and provision. Be ready to repeat these “steps” as often as needed. Pastor Joey though wisely encourages us to not face our struggles alone. Again, find the others too God has for you to journey with, others who can encourage you because they have walked a similar journey. But, Bev, isn’t God enough? Most definitely, but, God uses people, community, to touch our lives with His truth, His heart, His direction, His provision. We do need each other, and God planned it that way. God encourages the help of others throughout Scripture. Probably one of the most repeated and relatable illustration of others giving to help another is the story of the men who carried a paralyzed man to a house Jesus was teaching at, and the crowds who were listening blocked their entering. No problem for this community of helpers. They carried the man to the roof, dug a hole through the roof through which to lower their friend to Jesus. Jesus did the rest, and the paralyzed man found both forgiveness and physical healing. Personally, I have seen the help community can give when moms who have suffered the loss of a child, gather in community with other moms. We are free to share our broken emptiness, our questions, and our fears – and know we will be understood and accepted, and therein lies community. But because of that community, we can also become the heart and voice of our God who gives His love, His comfort, His strength, and even brings beauty from tragedy. And so many other needs persist in the lives of so, so many. God needs us to become His heart and voice, His hands and His feet, to become the community that is needed. Especially when we have walked a similar journey, But sometimes the only similarity needed, is knowing the “whatever” God has done for us, and from a heart of gratitude, becoming part of the community another needs. – Bev

In My Darkness I Found Light

Psalm 31: 21 “Praise the Lord, for He has shown me the wonders of His unfailing love. He kept me safe when my city was under attack.” It was an attack like no other. The darkness I was in just kept surrounding me. I felt no relief from this deep pain I found myself in. I felt I had been forgotten. I prayed for relief but there was none to be found. In Psalm 13, David writes, “How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul; with sorrow in my heart every day?” He almost sounds like he is yelling at God when he says these words, “Turn and answer me, O Lord my God!” Instead of turning away from God, he does just the opposite. He comes boldly to the One who can restore the sparkle to his eyes. You would think this was the darkness I was in was after the loss of my daughter Katie. The funny thing about this is, it was 20 years after my daughter’s death. Even in my time of grief I felt the Lord’s presence. I knew He was there walking beside me. I trusted in His love for me. Can I explain my dark days twenty years later? I have no explanation. Everything seemed right in my world, yet here I was in some of my darkest days. Depression is real. Depression is scary. Depression is lonely. Getting out of depression takes faith that God is still beside you. It also takes hard work. It requires being truthful to yourself, to others, and to God. We all will walk through dark times. There is no shame in that. Don’t give up! Seek help! Be bold like David and He will point you in the right direction. When I look back at that time, I still don’t understand how I found myself in such a dark time. There is no explanation except we live in a fallen world. What I do know is that there is help. There is a way through those dark times. The Lord kept me safe when I was under attack. He loves me. If He can love me, then I know He loves you too. Lord, You are our strength. You are strong when we are weak. You light a lamp for us in our darkness. – Michele

God Does Love me!

Mark 12: 30-31 “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." As I was I was sitting in church the pastor was speaking about these two scriptures and he said the most important commandment in the Bible was to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. As I sat and pondered this scripture, I thought about those who have never been shown love in their life, those that were raised in homes where their own parents had never truly been loved and so as a result, they passed down through generations what they thought was love, but in reality, it was very conditional, perhaps unkind, critical, harsh and maybe even performance based. If you were good, you were a good child and if you were bad, you were a bad child; there was never anything in between. I begin to think about how I came to be able to love my God in the way this scripture commands; what I did was I just made Him my priority and when everyone else around me disappointed me, I turned to Him and He was always there for me. I truly thought that I loved Him with all my heart, soul, mind and strength, but then here comes the second greatest command, to “love your neighbor as yourself.” And so the question became, if you have never been taught how to truly love, do you really love yourself? As the pastor asked this question, he said of course it’s easy to look in the mirror and like what you see, but that is not what this scripture is talking about. The real question is, do you really love yourself like God loves you, do you really see yourself as He sees you and do you love yourself and your life? Psalm 18:19 says, “He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he was pleased with me and delighted in me.” According to this scripture, David truly believed that God loved him, that God took pleasure in him and that God delighted in him. I wonder how many of us actually believe this? To be honest with you, I’ve struggled with this thought; I believed that God really loved me because he gave me the most beautiful gift in the world, someone who loved me unconditionally, someone who delighted in me, someone who took pleasure in me, someone who made me feel like I was the most important person in the world, my sweet Elisha boy. When God took that gift away from me, I began to look at myself and believe I had something to do with his death, that maybe if I had done something different, things would not have turned out how they did and I really wondered if God really loved me. Even though He was so near to me, even though He was speaking to me daily, I had a head knowledge, but I was having a very difficult time believing He truly loved me and applying this truth to my life. 1 Peter 4:12-13 says, “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed.” Day by day, moment by moment, God is working in us an eternal glory that is being revealed to every single person around us and He never gives us more than He has equipped us to endure, He has never left us, not for one moment, He has never forgotten us, He understands every heartache and, as a matter of fact, I have finally been able to see that He truly does love me and has my best interests at heart. I can’t explain to you how that shift has occurred; maybe it was my glimpses into Heaven and finally believing His promises to me about my future home with Him, but I can tell you this, as a result of my unrestrained, uncompromising, pure devotion to Him, I can certainly feel it returned from Him to me one hundred fold. – Melody

God Wants Your Love, Not Your Perfection

Romans 6:23 “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.” As we stepped through the door of the charming little shop, my eyes caught on a cluster of small Post-it notes clinging to the weathered wooden frame. A simple sign beside them read, “Please take one.” One note drew me in immediately, almost as if the Lord Himself had hung a glowing neon sign with flashing arrows pointing straight at it: This is for you. The soft pink paper bore these words in neat handwriting: “God wants your love, not your perfection.” In that quiet moment, the message landed like a tender whisper to my soul—freeing, reassuring, and exactly what I needed to hear. How I struggle with my perfection that eludes me. I love how the Bible describes our sin. The Bible tells us no one is righteous, no one is truly wise, no one does good. It even tells us our talk is foul, like stench, which means our tongues are full of lies. Even when we talk, snake venom drips from our lips. Destruction and misery follow us. Yet even in our imperfection, thank God, He has shown us how we can be made right by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. Does God keep a score of all the wrongs that we do day in and day out? Can our imperfections disqualify us from entering into the pearly gates we long for? The Bible doesn’t tell us to get our act together first. It tells us to come as we are. David, after he had wrecked everyone's lives, cried out to the Lord to create in him “a clean heart, oh God.” He didn’t say fix me, so I deserve you, but instead fix me because I can’t fix myself. God isn’t waiting for polished perfection. He knows that can’t happen. He is chasing after the broken, the one who keeps saying Lord, I goofed again. I keep coming back in all my brokenness, and He says He still loves me even with my flaws. That little pink Post-it note was a love note to me. He was telling me, Michele, I see you. I don’t need you fixed, I just need you here with Me.

– Michele

Heaven

Isaiah 55:8-9 "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” I did an in depth study of Heaven when Elisha transitioned to his permanent heavenly home and yet there are still so many questions I have; so many things I still want to understand. The more I desire to see glimpses of our eternal home, the more the Lord brings me comfort, peace, hope and assurance about what I do not see, about what is to come, not only eternally, but here on Earth. I desperately want to understand the “why” of all of this and I want to understand what God is doing, what He is about to do and what the future holds. Sometimes I think if I knew what was coming, I would feel better about what was happening. Randy Alcorn, author of one of the best books I have read called “Heaven” said, “Insisting on knowing the unknowable dooms us to frustration and resentment toward God. We lack God’s omniscience, omnipotence, wisdom, holiness, justice and goodness. If we insist we have the right, or even assume we have the capacity to understand the hidden purposes of God, we forfeit the comfort and perspective we could have had in kneeling before His vastly superior wisdom. God’s answer is beyond our understanding.” And so it all boils down to trust. Trust is something the Lord has been developing in me daily as He shows me continually day after day, how incredibly faithful He truly is. Even in the midst of my dull lack of faith, He shows up in such amazing ways, I can scarcely begin to write them all down. But I find it interesting that His timing is always perfect. Corrie ten Boom, author of the “The Hiding Place,” was a martyr for the Christian faith and she went through deep suffering and sorrow in a Nazi concentration camp; she watched her father and her sister die and only she survived. When she was a little girl she said to her father, “Daddy, I am afraid that I will never be strong enough to be a martyr for Jesus Christ.” “Tell me,” said her wise father, “when you take a train trip to Amsterdam, when do I give you the money for the ticket? Three or four weeks before?” Corrie replied, “No Daddy, you give me the money for the ticket just before we get on the train.” “That’s right,” he replied, “and so it is with God’s strength. Our Father in Heaven knows when you need the strength to be a martyr for Jesus Christ. He will supply all you need just in time.” When I stop and think about how many years the Lord was equipping and strengthening Corrie while she was trapped in the concentration camp, my heart is humbled to the core. I realize that my sufferings are minuscule compared to what this woman went through and now she stands in the presence of our Savior with a crown of righteousness because she believed that there is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still. Romans 8:37 says, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” A sweet friend of mine told me that trust is like being on a trapeze. As the trapeze artist jumps from one bar and is just about to grab the other bar that is coming, he is suspended in the air for a time until the other bar comes to him, where he will grab on and get to the other side, to a platform that is stable and safe. That is where I am at right now, I am waiting, I am suspended in the air ready to grab the rung that the Lord is about to give me. I know it will be great and I know it will be awesome, however, right now I am at that awkward place where I am in transition, suspended, and I am trusting in Him, waiting on the Lord and I know that what He has in store for me will be far better than I could have ever hoped, dreamed or imagined. – Melody