God Is Good

After walking out of the hospital on the evening I walked Jake home, friends drove me to get the other boys from where they were staying with close family friends.  They had said good-bye the night before and elected to not come down again.  We went home together, talked, held each other and managed to eat some dinner.  We slept all together in Zach's bed that night.  They boys slept soundly, or at least it seemed that way.  I don't think I slept much at all.  God and I had a long chat that night. He had a message for me the share and most of the night was spent with Him sharing that with me.  I got up early that morning, knowing I would speak at Jake's funeral. He told me there would be many wondering how a "good God" could do something like this and I was the only person who could answer that for them.  This is the message He gave me to share, which I did end up sharing at Jake's funeral.  God's goodness continues to overwhelm me and despite my wide range of emotions, including at times, anger, I will continue to proclaim His goodness and praise the ONE who gives and takes away...

One of Jake's favorite things to do was to go camping.  We went just about every Spring Break with friends.  It became our tradition.  He loved to be outside with his friends.  I think what he loved most about those trips was breakfast. Jake loves pancakes, chocolate chip pancake to be exact.  No butter, no syrup, no fork; bacon if you've got it, but really just pancakes, please!  He didn't particularly care for cereal, but as I was thinking about today and God began to put it on my heart that I was going to speak to all of you, I was thinking about one of my favorite breakfasts...Frosted Mini Wheats.  I love that perfect mixture of crunch mixed with the frosted sugar and the milk.  There is a balance there, timing is everything.  That time when the milk has absorbed just the right amount without the cereal becoming soggy.  God speaks to me in those types of word pictures, so as I began to sense God leading me to speak to you, that picture of pouring milk over the cereal; watching it expand and get bigger, lead me to thinking about how God is made bigger and magnified in our lives. That thought just sat on me for awhile and more on that began to come and I realized that this was something that was going to happen, I was going to stand up and talk to all of you.  And I know God placed it on my heart because I know so many of you are wondering why. He's 15! Why?  I doesn't make any sense!  And some of you are questioning, How could a "good" God take away somebody so young?  How could a "good" God do something like this?

I want you to listen to me very carefully...Just because God knew, before the foundation of the world really, that last Thursday was going to be the day He called Jake home, does not mean that God caused it to happen.  It's one of those great mysteries that we don't understand.  He knows things, but He doesn't necessarily do those bad things.

 We live in a fallen world. A world with germs and diseases, violence and accidents, sin and their natural consequences.  Jake was healthy and full of life.  The chances of him getting this particular bacteria to make the leap from the place it normally lives in the nose, to his ear and then his brain was as likely to happen as him being struck by lightening, but it did.  When Christ calls us to follow Him and we accept Him into our heart He does NOT promise us that we won't have trouble. He tells us in John 15 and 16 that we can't actually count on quite a bit of trouble.

The lie we fall into sometimes is that we think that when we take on Christ and we accept Him into our hearts that everything is going to be okay and that life is going to be okay. It's kind of life this "life enhancement" that we put on..."we have Christ and everything is good!"  I've heard it explained to me this way...  Imagine you are going on a trip and as you board the plane the flight attendant hands you a backpack and says, "wear this and your flight will be better."  So you take the backpack and you slip it on your back, she said wear it, not place it in the overhead baggage.  You take your seat and get buckled in.  For maybe a minute or two you may think, "Okay, this is good.  Somehow this thing is going to make my flight better."  For most of us it wouldn't take too long to get uncomfortable and even irritated with wearing the fight enhancing backpack.  It's uncomfortable, hard to sit, the seat belt is digging in.  The seat feels smaller. The tray table is hitting you in the wrong spot. Nothing about this backpack is making your flight feel better.  What if instead when the flight attendant handed you the backpack upon boarding she had told you, "wear this because at any moment this plane may crash and this is your parachute."  So now instead you put it on and you think, "Oh thank God" Now instead of focusing on the discomforts from wearing the backpack, you grip tight the straps and hold on because you know that at any moment this is going to be your life, your life line.  This is going to be the thing that saves you.

Jesus never promised us that this life would be easy. " In this world you will have trouble" and bad things are going to happen, but God does not leave us alone.  In that same section of John 15-16 Christ promises us the Holy Spirit.

John 15:26 says, "When the Counselor comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me" and in 16:12 He reaffirms, " I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.  But when HE, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth."

So back to my bowl of Mini-Wheats...When I pour milk over the mini-wheats, the milk is absorbed by the cereal and it begins to expand.  The milk pushes it's way into the spaces between the molecules of wheat and it gets bigger.

The gift of my God, I hope your God, is that in the midst of the bad things, though they don't make any sense at all and they seem unfair, God pours out His Holy Spirit on us. And the Holy Spirit begins to get absorbed into our lives and pushes out and into those spaces in between the cells and God is made bigger in our lives.  He is magnified.  That word magnified can take on two meanings.  It can mean that God is made bigger, but we can also use it as a magnifying glass.  We can take it and put it onto a situation and we can see God in ways we never would have before.  So when we choose Christ, that's the gift of God.  That's the gift. That even though we mourn, we can see the beautiful things that are happening.  The things that though it doesn't make sense, it makes it okay.

He has allowed me to see so many blessings over Jake's life, especially over this last year.  And even though it feels like my heart is shattered in a million pieces and it's hard even to breath, I can still stand here and tell you that GOD IS GOOD.  That He loves me, He loves my boys, He loves Jake and He loves you. And we are not without hope!  I KNOW, not doubt in my mind, that I'm going to see Jake again.  And I'm going to praise God until I do.


My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior - Luke 1:46-47

I delight greatly in the Lord.  My soul rejoices in my God. For He has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness. - Isaiah 61:10

Mother's Day...ugh!

It's Mother's Day. Three and a half months ago, the one who first made me a mom died. I have my three boys and I love them dearly, but not one of them replaces Jake and the hole his absence has created. To be honest I have never loved Mother's Day. My first Mother's Day might have been pretty good, but I don't really remember. Most of the Mother's Days that I do remember we're like every other day with 4 kids, 4 boys to be specific. I have very good children, I have been blessed beyond measure. They are healthy and well-behaved boys, but they are very much boys. They fight and bicker with each other.  They make huge messes and don't clean up after themselves. They have a never ending desire to "do something" because they are almost always bored. They are not especially thoughtful or appreciative, not to say that can't be, but certainly not often. None of that changes just because it's a day with a name attached to it. My expectations, however do change on this day. I'm not sure why I expect different behavior just because the day is labeled for me. Visions of sweet handmade gifts and breakfast in bed or perhaps an afternoon of peace and harmony as we eat out at my favorite restaurant have never really come to fruition at my house. Even as they have gotten older not much has changed. 

The week leading up to Mother's Day this year was rough. I knew today would be bad. I miss Jake. If any of them was the one to be thoughtful and remember the day, it was usually him.  Friends have sent cards and called to wish me Happy Mother's Day, but it's not quite the same as hearing it from your kids. 

This year, mostly it has just sucked, to be honest. I've search for some deep meaning or a God moment to help me through it, but I go nothing! And for some reason I think that is the point. Sometimes things just suck and nothing anyone says or does can change that. 

I miscarried my first pregnancy. I wasn't far enough along to know for sure if it was a boy or girl, but in my heart I knew I had a daughter. I named her Meghan. We lost another baby in between Jake and Zach and had an adoption fall through after Nate. I lost my niece, Rebekah as well. I was blessed to hold her and bathe her after she was born. With every loss I have grieved. I grieved not only the loss of my baby or niece, but also the future I had envisioned with them. That is so much harder now with Jake. Every first without him seems to accentuate the fact that my future is and will be different than the one I had dreamed about for him and me.  

I think it's fair to say I'm not a stranger to grief and loss. I know that I am not alone. Good friends have struggled with infertility and others have had years of struggle with children who have made bad choices and wait patiently for God to intervene. Others have lost babies through miscarriage, still-birth, cancer and suicide. This year along with my own grief, my heart is overwhelmed for all the mom's who are hurting. On a day when we celebrate moms, I grieve for those moms for whom this day stands as painful reminder of unmet expectations. I'd love to have something wonderful and poignant to say, but once again I've got nothing...sometimes it just sucks. Sometimes there is no promise that it's going to get any easier or that "this to shall pass." Sometimes it's a matter of putting on a nice dress and make-up and getting through the day as best you can. Sometimes you have to look hard for something to be thankful for. Sometimes you just have to let yourself cry and give yourself some grace. And if tomorrow it's not much better, just hold on until it is...and know you are not alone.