She had a seat on the front row, close to the speaker’s podium. Beside her, and behind her, sat the moms attending the West Coast Umbrella Ministries Conference. When I had attended my very first conference many years before, I realized the heart the leadership all had for grieving moms – moms who had known the death of a child, moms who were walking that grief journey of hurt, pain, and emptiness, moms who would be shown the heart of God for each of them. At that first conference, I also began to know Daisy a bit. She too had a heart for each mom who came. After the loss of her own son, Danny, who died unexpectedly from a heart attack, Daisy and her friend, Donna, wanted a safe, encouraging place for grieving moms. They sketched out a plan for an annual conference in southern California, a plan that God enlarged year after year. The plan had been actively pursued for about ten years when I attended for the first time. Daisy spoke at each conference too and shared the heart God had shaped within her.
As she sat this year on the front row, now almost thirty years into the outreach she, Donna, and God had started, and not getting any younger, I was hoping she would speak again to all of us. And she stood, took those few cautious steps to the podium, and laid out the papers that her heart had once more spilled over to, warmly smiled, and shared those heartfelt words. She kept it relatively short, but our hearts connected with hers. She told us again about how Danny as a child had shown Jesus to her, and how Danny as a young adult had given her a heart for other grieving moms. And as she continued to speak, she was encouraging each of us to walk forward on our journeys and to find how each of us could be used by God too.
Listening to her, and realizing God had enabled her in her outreach for many years, I also was reminded again, that I am not too many years behind her. Yes, I’ve wanted to be “just like Daisy” for a long time, but this time the words I heard encouraged me just to be the “Bev” God wanted me to be. I may slow down a bit, but rather than look at what I could no longer do, find the direction in each of my days that God has for me, and by His help, pursue that direction and purpose.
But, isn’t that what God wants for all of us??? We’re all at different places in our journey through life, and God has uniquely shaped each of us – our passions, our abilities, our personalities, our experiences – and with our love and passion for God active and pursuing, nothing is an oops! or an accident with God. He can give purpose to our brokenness, and even to our failures or limitations. And with the “me” or the “you,” He has been shaping through the decades, He may change “how” He uses us, but the core of who He has shaped me or you to be, need not change. He has given me, and you, “a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God,”
and it does not need to change.
– Bev
(Related Bible reading: Psalm 40:1-3;
Ephesians 2:10)
