The Journey Continues

"She's our daughter. 

Conceived in our hearts and birthed out of faith. We will love her as our own, because she will be. 

And so, we embark on this journey of finding her, of searching the world over, until we find her and bring her home to our hearts. 

July 28, 2012...let the story begin." 

I penned those words nearly 3 years ago, and our adoption story has taken more twists and turns than we ever thought possible. As it was once said, "My friends, adoption is redemption. It's costly, exhausting, expensive and outrageous. Buying back lives costs so much. When God set out to redeem us, it killed Him."

Buying back lives IS expensive, but it is worth it because HE is worth it and THEY are worth it and we will not stop until we have brought our child home...and even then, the real journey has only truly just begun.

Whether you're new to our story, or whether you've journeyed with us from day #1, you've probably heard us talk about the little girl we were in the process of adopting from Uganda. We were not matched with a specific child, only a general profile, but we loved her - whoever she was - fiercely and covered her with love and prayer as best as we knew how.

But as most of you know, the doors to adoption in Uganda seem to be closing for the foreseeable future, and so with much prayer and with hearts full of hope and anticipation, we are searching for a new international adoption program!

Daunting as the task may seem - to begin all over again and start a new international adoption from scratch - we knew from the beginning adoption is not for the faint of heart. Truer words could have never been spoken! Edgar and I are passionate about adoption, always have been and always will be. We are filled with so much hope and joy at the thought that God would choose us to partner with Him in redemption, in buying back a precious life and giving that little soul a hope and a future.

When we learned we were pregnant in early 2014, the Lord clearly told us to rest into parenthood and enjoy our son Samuel without investing energy into our adoption until Samuel was 6 months old. Now that our precious son has reached that milestone, we are bursting with excitement to begin our new adoption. What that means is we are all the way back at square one, researching and looking for a reputable agency with successful international programs. Please pray with us that over the coming weeks and months that we will land on a new program and be able to begin the process!

To kick things off, we are having an "Adoption Fundraiser Garage Sale" next Saturday, May 2nd! For anyone local, if you have items you would like to donate to our sale, we will gladly coordinate getting those from you. Even though we don't know exactly where we are adopting from yet, we decided to go ahead and have this garage sale earlier in the year and not wait until it's 1000F degrees outside. :-)

There's a line in a Bethel song that says "I've come to this place in my life where I'm full but I'm not satisfied." That's a great way to describe how we feel. Because we know our family isn't complete yet, in fact we're only just getting started, and we won't rest until we've brought home every child that belongs to us.

Friends, this is adoption. 

Welcome to our journey as it continues... 

{ Baby Love is on the way! }

"You crown the year with Your goodness, 

and Your paths drip with abundance." 

Psalm 65:11

Words just don't seem to do justice to all that is in our hearts right now... These last days and months have been SO full, I hardly know where to begin. 

For those who have not heard our wonderful news, we are expecting our little miracle Baby Love in early October! Today I am 14 weeks pregnant and Edgar and I can hardly contain our joy and delight as we prepare to welcome this little one into the world. 

Also, we are buying a HOME here in Dallas! Read on to find out more details... 

This pregnancy came as one of the best surprise gifts we've ever received. Surprise? Well yes, we were actually quite surprised when we found out on January 26th that we were expecting a baby! 

Early last fall, we worked with a wonderful fertility specialist who confirmed that we are indeed healthy and very fertile, and we did two fertility treatments with her clinic. Choosing to go forward with these treatments was another deep layer of surrender for us. We felt the Lord was asking us to be willing to let Him move in any way, shape or form He chose and not limit Him to how we wanted the story to be written. 

Although both treatments went textbook perfect, they did not result in pregnancy... 

And I was borderline devastated. 

These two unsuccessful fertility treatments were extremely hard for me to deal with in my heart. I found myself thinking, "I can't believe I am in this situation. I can't believe this is my life! I never thought I would end up here..." Have you ever found yourself walking through a hardship that you had never imagined? or asking God, "Ok, what in the world was that all about?" 

Yet for Edgar and I, this was yet another pivotal season of faith and hope and choosing to anchor ourselves into the rock-solid refuge of our Heavenly Father. We made the choice to worship and praise Him not for everything but IN everything. It was hard, but we chose to rest and delight in His perfect plan that certainly didn't make any sense to us. 

And so we stepped boldly into 2014 - which marked exactly 4 years of trying to get pregnant and crying out to God for children - full of hope and faith, full of zeal and dreams for our future. 

After ALL of that, when I woke up on January 26th and randomly decided to take a pregnancy test, I gotta be honest guys, I wasn't exactly expecting to find out that we are having a BABY! 

"We went through fire and through water; 

but You have brought us out to rich fulfillment." 

Psalm 66:12

And yet, as we have learned to do so many times before in our long journey, we rejoiced with such joy on that day and we also wept with great sorrow. Because on that same day, our dear friends had to say goodbye to their precious little one long before they wanted to - they miscarried at 19 weeks... To find out both of these life-altering pieces of news within 24 hours was such a monumental exercise in trusting God's sovereign plan. 

A few days later we were able to attend a small ceremony with our friends as they surrendered their daughter to the Lord and chose to walk through the valley of the shadow of death with brave hearts full of hope and faith. We admire them so much. We know their deep pain from personal experience and we honor their journey.

So we all trusted the Lord with our babies together... Having walked through two miscarriages before, it was really an active exercise of our will to daily - sometimes hourly - trust the Lord with this little life growing in my womb, knowing and believing that He is the author and sustainer of life. 

"He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, 

but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, 

and being fully convinced that what He had promised 

He was also able to perform. " 

Romans 4:20-21

The 14 weeks of this pregnancy have flown by in many ways, and here we are finding ourselves in early April, with a contract on a HOME! This was yet another sudden and delightful surprise. As long as things continue to proceed well, we should be home owners for the 3rd time in mid-May! It is an amazing thought to realize this is the home we will bring our new baby home to...it just takes my breathe away. 

Update on our ADOPTION AND FOSTER PLANS: 

The major slow-down in Uganda with international adoptions has continued to remain in effect. There are many complicated political reasons why this door is possibly starting to close, but the bottom line for us is: we still feel like we should keep holding on to the plan to adopt our little girl from Uganda until there is nothing left to hold on to. Towards the end of this year we will evaluate where the Uganda program is at and decide at that point how to proceed - keep waiting, or change plans to adopt from a different country.

In addition, now that we are expecting a baby early October, we will have to postpone any plans to foster until after the baby is at least 6 months old. We had already begun training classes and paperwork to get licensed through the state of Texas, but it will be at least a year until we reevaluate our course of action for fostering.

And so, our "adoption fund" savings account that so many precious people have so generously contributed to is waiting for us, waiting to help bring our daughter home safely to our arms... 

In all of these things, with every one of the children that God is going to bring into our home in the years to come, through loss and through gain, through little and through much, through trials and through joy, we trust Him completely and entirely! His plan is perfect. 

Friends, thank you for rejoicing with us 

in the sweetness of this new season! 

(many thanks to our wonderful new brother-in-law John Chambers for spontaneously snapping these photos at a recent family dinner!) 

If you believe...

Is anyone else having a hard time realizing that 2013 has come to an end?

I sure am!

When I sat down to ponder my life and wait on the Lord for fresh promises and words of hope at the end of 2012, I had no idea all that would transpire over the coming 365 days. Honestly, if you would have told me what would happen in 2013 for Edgar and I, there's a good chance I would not have believed you...

   I wouldn't have believed that my husband would get laid off from his job...
   ...that we would have to sell the lovely home we had just built...
   ...that we would leave [yet another] precious community of amazing friends...
   ...that we would move back "home" to Dallas...
   ...that our adoption would be postponed longer than we ever imagined...
   ...that we would get to be part of our beloved Gateway Church again...
   ...that we would hear God tell us to begin fostering...!
   ...that we would get a puppy...!

This year has been full of some of the highest highs and the lowest lows we have ever walked through. But for each goodbye, there has been a hello. For each closed door, there has been an open door just around the corner. For each tear, there have been smiles to far outweigh the heartache.

And on this first day of January, the first day of this brand new year, I can't help but realize how God is shifting things in our lives. He has brought Edgar and I into a place where we are doing the very things we said we would "NEVER" do! That would be a good theme for us for 2013: shifting and shaking everything that could possibly be shaken and bringing us into Never Never Land. And in the shifting, in that testing, He does new and beautiful things that we can hardly comprehend.

So we have had a few new things going on over here... The first is that we did indeed get a brand new little puppy! She is the biggest surprise of our lives because Edgar and I were the couple that had said we would "never" get a dog. And I can hardly even grasp how it happened, all I know is that we saw her and instantly fell in love and knew she was supposed to be our dog. And trust me, we were just as shocked as our family and close friends were! We named her Schatje which means "little treasure" in Dutch, and our sweet little Schatje is the gift we never knew we needed.

But of far greater significance...we have begun the process of becoming foster parents...!

"What?!" you say? That's exactly what we said too when we first realized it. Become foster parents? Who in their right mind wants to do that? Fostering was yet another thing I "never" wanted to do. Can you imagine loving children as your very own only to have them ripped from you with barely a moments notice? Fostering children sounded like the most profoundly painful heartache and I was not in the least bit interested in voluntarily putting myself through that kind of pain...

But God has a way of shifting things in our lives and hearts in such a strategic way and He brings it all about in His perfect timing. From where I sit now, having a heart freshly shattered by His love (and also partly because of this book), I cannot imagine being more excited and passionate about fostering than I am now. What a precious opportunity to love on children, to help them find healing and to shepherd their precious hearts for however long God gives them to us.

A few weeks ago we began the process of "foster-to-adopt" with a local agency and this month we will start the required 30+ hours of required training. What does "foster-to-adopt" mean? We will take a child or a sibling group into our home while their parents work on meeting whatever requirements CPS has set up for them to earn their kids back. The average time foster children stay in a foster home under this scenario is 12-18 months. If at the end of this time the parents have been unable/unwilling to live up to the requirements CPS gave them, their parental rights will be terminated and we will be able to adopt the child/children.

Are we still adopting our little child from Uganda? YES. Though the wait has become longer than anyone anticipated and several families above us have dropped out of the program (putting us now at #21 on the waiting list) we feel like God has told us to stick it out and continue trusting Him with Uganda.

With all that said, my mind short circuits whenever I try to picture what 2014 could look like. I can't help but think that our God wants to do so much more in each of our lives this coming year than ever before. I believe He wants to pour Himself out in greater ways than we have ever experienced, that He wants to give us fresh faith and hope in who He is. I want each of us to believe Him more than we ever dreamed possible. 

But that is often our problem: belief.  Have you ever struggled with belief? with faith? with hope? Perhaps because you have been disappointed when you hoped for something...or maybe God didn't seem to come through for you when you cried out to Him. I don't know why you  might struggle with belief from time to time, but I can say that I'm right there with you in the struggle.

My constant prayer is "Lord, I do believe! and please help my unbelief!" Have you ever prayed that?

Mary and Martha believed Jesus would heal their brother. The disciples believed Jesus would heal Lazarus. Yet oddly, Jesus delayed in arriving on the scene. After waiting until it was "too late", Jesus told His disciples in John 11, "Lazarus died. And I am glad for your sakes that I wasn't there. You're about to be given new grounds for believing..." Sometimes we can't explain why God delays in answering our prayers or why He goes about it not directly but by taking the long way around, but I do know that no matter what you are believing God for, He is faithful and He will always do what He says He will do.

Instead of giving them an instant miracle, Jesus takes Mary and Martha and His disciples on the long way around. To frustrate and disappoint them? NO! To set the stage for glorifying the Father and building their faith. The faith and awe and adoration that grew in their hearts for Jesus after seeing Lazarus raised from the dead was so much richer and deeper and eternal than if Jesus had simply showed up "on time" and healed Lazarus while he was yet living.

"Then Jesus looked her in the eye, 'Didn't I tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"' (John 11:40) Friends, look with me into the eyes of Jesus and let's hear Him telling us that... Let's put our faith in the One who makes all things new, the One who brings the prodigals home and sets the captives free, the One who places the lonely in families and heals the brokenhearted. Let's break out of our "never" boxes and let Him do fresh things, new things in our lives. Don't you want to believe Him for more this year than ever before??!

From our little family to yours, we wish you love, we wish you peace, we wish you joy in this New Year as we celebrate all that means most to us. Our reason to celebrate and rejoice in these holy-days has been because Jesus Christ humbled Himself and came to earth to ransom us and restore life and hope to all of humanity. It is because of His life that we now have life, and not just any life, but an ABUNDANT life of great joy and hope.

We have hope in our future because we have hope in Him. 

Here's to 2014! 

I can give thanks for that.

"Autumn...the year's last, loveliest smile." 

William Cullen Bryant

Autumn...red, crisp, magical. The turning of leaves and the preparing for slumber by the earth. Golden rays light up the trees around us and leaves float to the ground like peaceful feathers. The ground seems hushed in reverent silence, bidding all the world to nestle down into deep sleep. 

Growing up I never liked fall, because it meant summer was over. And summer was my most favorite time of year. I could never seem to get enough sunshine. But times have changed... Autumn means more to me now than ever before. Perhaps I've personified autumn into a beautiful woman rich with color, wisdom and warmth and I simply enjoy her beauty and nurturing companionship.

And just like Anne of Green Gables so eloquently put it, "I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers." Because my birthday is in October and I'm especially glad there was a month for me to be born in.

With autumn comes change...and with autumn comes death. 

Death?

Yes. The leaves, though they change into glorious shades of rich orange, yellow and red, the truth is: they are dying. But this death is the most beautiful kind of death, because we all know what happens after autumn gives way to a long sleepy winter. Spring always comes. Since the creation of time, the seasons have not once failed to make their full cycle.

And somehow I'm reminded of my life when I look at these lovely dying leaves. Leaves carry a certain beauty in the fullness of summertime, when they are bright and green and full of life. But I think a leaf has never been more beautiful than in the season that it must die. 

So it is with us; when the sun is shining and things are great, we can still praise the Lord and enjoy the abundance. But when the season of surrender, of testing and trying and ultimately, the season of death comes, I think the Lord looks at us like the autumn leaves. He has never seen anything more beautiful than a soul surrendered to Him, willing to die to self, die to dreams, die to desires.

One of the dreams we are having to continually surrender to Him is our adoption. We have been in the process for one and a half years and it seems like the wait that still looms ahead of us could be longer than the time we have already waited. It's frustrating and disappointing because we know there are 147 million orphans in the world right now who need to be loved and to know they are precious. We are believing in faith that we will have both biological and adopted children, and we are just bursting to lavish them with love.

It can truly feel like nothing is happening on the surface; we are still #23 on the waiting list. We've been sitting in this spot for quite a while now. Yet even though it can seem as though very little is going on, we have walked with the Lord long enough to know He is always working behind the scenes. Always. He is preparing our hearts, preparing our daughter's heart, preparing our community and our home. But still, I daily let go and die to my ideas and opinions about timing and how I think it should all go.

And though this death is ultimately incredibly beautiful and wondrous to behold, there is a pain that comes with it which strikes the deepest chords of the soul. Sometimes we wonder why God would ask us to go through it all. Why would a loving and good God, who is perfect and glorious and full of love and justice, ask us to die such a slow and painful death?

It's because He is longing to produce spring within us. 

Because through each season, the roots grow deeper and deeper and the trunk of that tree gains a new ring every year. And the harvest of death sown into the heart of God is glorious, abundant LIFE. This is a life laid at His feet in brokenness and surrender, and He calls it beautiful.

Hallelujah.

As you enjoy the rest of this beautiful autumn season, which I personally believe is the most beautiful autumn season Dallas has ever seen, take heart and remember what happens below the surface of the earth when winter comes. Though it seems eerie-silent on the surface, life is being produced deep within.

I can give thanks for that. 

{ this free thing that costs me everything }

"Though You Slay Me" by Shane & Shane 

"I come, God, I come

I return to the Lord

The one who's broken

The one who's torn me apart

You struck down to bind me up

You say You do it all in love

That I might know You in Your suffering"

Because some days I just need to know that He is there. That He is present and He is good. Some days, most days in fact, more than the blessings that He freely gives, I just want His presence... I know He is always present and always near; but some days [most days] I just long to feel Him in that tangible way. Like the warm breath of a summertime breeze on your skin... 

"Though You slay me

Yet I will praise You

Though You take from me

I will bless Your name

Though You ruin me

Still I will worship,

Sing a song to the one who's all I need"

Because some days I just need to remind my soul that He is ALL that I need... And even if I wouldn't see another sunrise or feel another gentle touch on this earth again, the love He has already demonstrated to me is more than enough. Often I must lift the cup of the blood of His covenant and eat the bread of His body that was broken for me, and I need to remind myself that I - yes, even I - was the joy that was laid before Him. 

"My heart and flesh may fail

The earth below give way

But with my eyes, with my eyes I'll see the Lord

Lifted high on that day

Behold, the Lamb that was slain

And I'll know every tear was worth it all"

Because EVERY single moment of pain and suffering in the path of obedience is doing something deep in my soul. No I can't see it and sometimes I don't even feel it. It doesn't make sense and there are so many things I think I would change if I could. But I know and believe in the deepest reservoir of my spirit that as we consider it ALL joy, we learn to know Him by intimately communing with Him in the very presence of suffering.

When we choose to worship Jesus in the face of suffering, John Piper describes it as a peculiar weight of glory that is being produced and worked out within us. And so, this free thing that costs me everything: it is grace. Grace to live and move and have my being in Christ. Grace to face the day with joy and courage. Grace to get up and rejoice and worship and celebrate life. Grace freely and extravagantly poured out over you and over me. 

But even though it is free, it is not cheap; it costs me EVERYTHING. To receive the grace of God costs me my very life. It is only in death that life can be produced. It is when we bury our precious seed into the soil of surrender and trust the God of heaven and earth to water the seed and shine down with life upon it, it is in that moment of totally and completely giving all that we are and all that we have to Him...well, that is when He produces within us such glorious fruit, sparkling with the very radiance of heaven itself. The glory of God is then able to rest upon us, not for our sake alone, but that we might be laid-down lovers who in response minister His grace to a broken and wounded world. 

And it is in death, my death - not a physical death [yet] but the death of my dreams, my rights, my will - that I identify with Jesus and His death on the cross. I come to know Him, understand Him, gaze into His eyes in a deeper and more profound way than ever before. We gain a glimpse into His heart that is only possible through suffering! This alone is reason to rejoice in suffering. Because once the season of pain is over, the intimacy with Jesus will always remain. 

And this is the glory of it all: LIFE will come. We can rest assured in that! After night comes morning and after winter the spring always shows up. 

Until then, you and I must endure this season, never giving up, never losing hope. I don't know what your season looks like, but hold on and keep pressing upwards, friend. Every step towards the Throne of Grace is producing in you something so precious and beautiful. 

When we see Him face to face, 

we will not be disappointed!

It will be worth it all. 

When the devastating blow hits too close to home | Sometimes God gives us more than we can handle

You know that saying "God won't give you more than you can handle"? Well I think that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

Because last week was way more than I can handle. 

- After seeing a fertility specialist, being checked out, poked and prodded from head to toe and being told that we are healthy, young and very fertile, another month came and went and I am not pregnant... That just stinks. So bad.
- We were told by our adoption agency that the wait in Uganda has only just begun... The 6 month pause (which we told you about in this post) which should have been over early October is going to continue until further notice. That is just so sad and disappointing.
- This week a $212 medical bill from April 2012 resurfaced, and despite the fact that it's a charge that doesn't even make sense and certainly isn't fair, we have to pay the bill or it will hurt our credit. And this isn't just any medical bill; it is from my second miscarriage. We are still having to pay money to cover the cost of losing our second child. Talk about timing...
- Our car had to go into the shop and it wasn't the quick fix we had hoped for. Nearly $1000 later we got our car back, and the engine smoked the whole drive home from the auto shop... Are you serious? So our trusty little VW got towed back to the shop this morning... God don't you know we are still saving up for our adoption?!
- My 89 year old grandmother was taken to the emergency room again and spent the week in the hospital because of blockage in her heart. I love her so much and grieve that she is not doing well.

To say this was a very rough week would be an understatement... 

And if you've read any of my previous blogs (which have only scratched the surface of my life story :-)) this is not exactly the first hard week of my life.

The thing is, I know that my life looks like a fairy tale compared with so many hurting ones around the world...

- I've never been sentenced to prison
- I've never been sent to a concentration camp
- I've never been sexually trafficked
- I've never been beaten or molested
- I've never known what true starvation feels like
- I've never known the pain of my dad or my husband abandoning me

And I guarantee if you ask any person who has walked through something that horrific, they would tell you that it was way more than they could handle too. The weight of the pain of this world is enough to crush the human spirit. But then Jesus steps in...

You may not even know who He is. But He knows who you are. He loves you, so much in fact that He died to buy back your life from death. Every single person was born with a one-way ticket to hell and Jesus came to earth to cancel that ticket and give us the free gift of FOREVER with Him in paradise. It is only by His grace, by the new life I received through Jesus that I can make it. And not only just make it - I can THRIVE even through suffering and sorrow and heartache, because I KNOW that my God is doing something so precious behind the scenes. And His finished work and final destination is always worth waiting for.

I can't see it now, and it certainly doesn't make sense now, but my heart is more confident than ever before in my Heavenly Father's goodness towards each and every single one of His children. He does not show partiality ("an unfair tendency to treat one person better than another"). Period. I cannot explain why things seem so unfair for so many people, but He promises it so I am choosing to trust Him and take that promise to the bank. 

Will you do that too, friend? With the things in your life that are hard and don't seem fair? You can trust Him too, I promise.

No He isn't fair and He isn't "safe" per our definition ("predictable and controllable"), but He is GOOD and He is just and He promises to work everything - absolutely EVERY thing - for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. That beautiful promise is found in Romans 8:28. We can get so tunnel-visioned, focusing on today and right here and now and this yuck we find ourselves in. But let's lift our eyes, friends! Let's focus our hearts on the big God that we serve and trust Him with our lives and stop judging God's plan for us based on one tiny snapshot moment. 

So that bit up there about "God not giving us more than we can handle"? His grace is more than enough in our weakness (2 Cor 12:9). When what we have is not enough and the cup of suffering He asks us to drink is more than we can handle on our own, it is His peace and presence and grace poured out like rain that carry us through the storm. 

I like every story to have a happy ending. Call me old fashioned or romantic, but I just do. And so here is the good news and the piece of hope that I need for today: my story DOES have a happy ending. I don't know what it is yet, and you don't know the ending to your story either. But this is the truth we need to cling to, and it is the thing that actually makes it possible to rejoice even in heartache and pain:

Our stories will have very happy endings, friends. :-) 

When we have to say goodbye...

My husband Edgar and I have been married for 5 years. That’s not very long to a lot of people, but we have lived a LOT of life in these 5 years. Most young people who have been married for 5 years expect to keep growing old with each other and with their close friends and family, the people who were probably their bridesmaids and groomsmen in their wedding.

Atleast, that’s what I sure expected to happen… But it didn’t.

We have said goodbye to two of our best friends who passed away in the short years since our wedding. Beautiful Lauren Williams (farthest left) died from sudden pneumonia just a few short weeks after we got married. She breathed her last breathe on this earth so suddenly, and the funeral happened so fast I did not even have time to jump on an airplane and fly from the Netherlands back to America in time. I missed her funeral…The shock and grief ran deep into my veins. Lauren was so beautiful, so full of radiance and joy. I can still hear her musical laughter and remember her kind brown eyes.

And then a few years later, Sam Torres (also farthest left) was killed in an accident on his way to work. He was an amazing warrior-hearted man, full of the tenderness and power of the kingdom of Heaven. Sam was consumed with Jesus and with a love for the lost. But he left this earth earlier than anyone wanted him to, leaving behind a beautiful young bride. 

Sometimes I still can’t believe it… Lauren and Sam are not here on earth anymore. I miss them and love them so much…sometimes it still hurts and sometimes I still cry. Lauren was a forever soul-sister kind of friend, the kind that you stayed up until way too late just laughing and sharing hearts and dreaming and planning life together. And Sam taught me so much about the kingdom of Heaven.

If each one of my tears poured out at the feet of Jesus becomes a precious jewel to Him, then I will have an inheritance as high as the Swiss Alps, as wide as the ocean…

That’s the beautiful thing about knowing that we are creatures of eternity, not of time. If my perspective is only of this lifetime, the grief and pain of this thing we call life would absolutely overtake me. Sure it is full of joy and glory and beauty too. But the pain leaves marks on our hearts that no sunny day can take away. A lot of you know what I'm talking about... 

We go through loss, heartache, heartbreak. We have to say goodbye too soon. We watch the pain of the world, of war and famine and children dying and sometimes it all seems too much and we feel not enough. We lose our jobs and can't pay the bills. We feel cheated, lied to and left out. And we wonder why God doesn't just come and clean up this mess and make everything better...

He DOES come. But sometimes He doesn't clean up the mess... Sometimes He doesn't fix everything that's broken and make everything right again. Atleast not yet; that day IS coming though. But for today, for the messy and dirty here and now, for the present moments that can feel painful or empty, He comes and holds us and rocks us as a child in the midst of the mess. 

We just must be willing to receive Him in the way He shows up, not in the way we expect Him to show up. 

And it is in those moments when He can seem so silent. We cry out to Him and pray and lift up our needs, and sometimes it feels like He doesn't answer. 

But what is God doing in those moments? Is He as silent as He seems? I know the answer to this question might not be what you want to hear... I'm not even sure what pain you, precious reader, are experiencing. You know, we've had over 5000 people from over 20 different countries visit this blog over the last year, and each and every one of you have a story that is worth telling. 

I believe the true answer to that question is that in those moments when He seems silent and far away, He is actually closer than ever. And it is a severe mercy that He chooses to do it this way...

The theological answer is that God is always as close as our heartbeat, and technically He can't be closer at some moments than others because He never ever goes away from us. He doesn't change. We do. When pain seeps in, we have a choice to turn our hearts closer to God or choose to get bitter and angry at Him, blaming Him for not protecting us. But I have seen time and time again in my life and in many lives around me that if we make the choice to turn to Him - even when it looks like angry beating on the chest of our Daddy God - He pours out an extra measure of grace and somehow He just feels closer than our next breath. 

But the most hopeful part of it all? We are products of eternity! This is not our final home. We who are sons and daughters of God can stand with hope even in hard times because we know what the end looks like. 

"I saw Heaven and earth new-created. Gone the first Heaven, gone the first earth, gone the sea.I saw Holy Jerusalem, new-created, descending resplendent out of Heaven, as ready for God as a bride for her husband. I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: “Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They’re his people, he’s their God. He’ll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone.” The Enthroned continued, “Look! I’m making everything new. Write it all down—each word dependable and accurate.” Then he said, “It’s happened. I’m A to Z. I’m the Beginning, I’m the Conclusion. From Water-of-Life Well I give freely to the thirsty. Conquerors inherit all this. I’ll be God to them, they’ll be sons and daughters to me." Revelation 21, The Message

Refilled and refueled with hope in nothing but His grace, willing to receive His mercy however severe it may feel, we walk into another day as more than conquerors. And really, even though I still miss Lauren and Sam, I never have to say goodbye. Because I WILL see them again...