I thought I'd finish this week reflecting on where I found hope after we lost Cole and in the days, weeks, months and even years to follow.
In the first few days after we lost him I was just so shattered and yet so much in shock. I kept thinking that it must be a dream...well a nightmare. And when reality hit and I remembered everything that happened the tears would fall all over again. It was so hard to find hope in the uncertainty. We didn't know how Cameron was doing, didn't know what his prognosis was, didn't know how long I would remain pregnant. What got me through those times was Cameron... his kicks, his movements, seeing him moving on the ultrasound. Other things that got me through was the encouraging and supportive words of friends... the notes, the emails, the calls, the people who brought us food. This all gave me hope that the world hadn't crashed... just our world had. And likely one of the best sources of hope I came across was the people I met online who had been there. Speaking to theme, hearing their stories, hearing their outcomes..this all gave me such a sense of hope and took away the lonliness I felt.
Cole passed away just 12 days before Christmas..the season of hope. Everywhere I looked there were happy faces, people celebrating, laughter, love. I felt like I just had so little of this and really just wanted to crawl in a hole and ignore Christmas all together. But I had two little boys who could not possibly understand this, two little boys who didn't really even grasp that the 'two babies in there, right mom?' wasn't their reality anymore. They were excited, they were full of joy and hope and thankfully some of this rubbed off on me and I did find myself smiling. I also found hope and a connection to Cole in the lights of Christmas I saw.. candles, especially at church, Christmas lights etc. Thinking of Cole being in Heaven also gave me hope. Hope that he was free of pain, sickness, a life of medical complications as the doctors had all but assured us that this was the outcome given the damage to his heart and the hydrops on his brain that they saw. And hope that he was in Heaven with Jesus and I would see him again.
I began to feel helpless again though at New Year's. How could I ring in a new year, look forward to a new year, when the bottom had fallen out of my world. My dreams were shattered and my heart broken....where was the hope in that???
And then my water broke.
Crisis forced me to focus on Cameron and not on myself, not on my grief. My hope came in a sureness that this baby was not coming now or even soon. I don't know why I was so sure and I guess you could say that in itself was my hope.
In the days leading up to meeting my boys I was a wreck but I found hope in the reassurance from the doctors that Cameron's prognosis was excellent, no different then any other full term baby despite being 6 weeks premature. This filled me with hope in more then one way... obviously for Cameron but also that Cole had protected his twin and kept him safe in this waiting time. I was also filled with hope at the assurance that Cole was with Jesus, that only his broken body would be born, his spirit had left and gone to heaven. I was also filled with hope in the words and actions of support of so many family and friends.
In the days and weeks after meeting Cole my hope came in the faces of all my boys. In the healthiness of Cameron, in the light that shone in his eyes that I knew was Cole, in the contentedness of him, in the smiles of his older brothers as they met him, their adoration of him.
For many months Cameron gave me both hope and joy as he grew, became stronger and healthier, smiled, laughed and snuggled and yet at the same time seeing him alone, without Cole, stole my peace...but that is a subject for next week.
As time went on I found great hope in the fact that Cole was with Jesus and that one day we would be reunited. It really was the only thing I held on to sometimes, the only thing that kept me going. I pictured the life he had, no pain, no childhood struggles like bullying, sickness, scrapes, falls and stitches (I get this enough from Brycen LOL), none of the loneliness that everyone feels at times in life, the regrets, the doubts, the defeat and even the trials like the one his life being taken had caused for us. He would experience only the joy of paradise, only the perfectness of heaven. I hated that he could not be with me but I knew his life on earth, like all of ours, is just a small part of what he was meant to do...this is not our home, just merely a stopping ground.
When I became born again in Christ my hope was so renewed. I grew, I changed, I became more sure of what my place was, who I was in the Lord. That's not to say I didn't have doubts, questions, confusion, sadness, anger etc. But in all of that I had a sense of Hope, a promise of a full life and am eternal life where I would see Cole again!
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Friday, December 6, 2013
Images of Hope
Just a heads up and apology...today's post looks all disorganized and disjointed. Weird font colours, big spaces etc.... my computer has a mind of it's own.!
I also think of the words 'Jesus is the light of the world' as the birth of Jesus gave the world hope.
This is Cameron for me.
His very existence, every little kick he gave, every hiccup,
every movement on ultrasound.... each of these was
all I needed sometimes to have hope for the life we had been given.
I think this was something that is very hard for loss moms to get past... to live without regrets. It is so hard not to question the choices you made.... I should have researched more so I would have known that I needed to be seen more often, have more ultrasounds, have a level 3 ultrasound that would have detected Cole's cord insertion issue. I have regrets...many... on how I dealt with the day I delivered him. But I can't look back with regret...it keeps me stuck in the past and it's ahead that is the future. I can only look ahead with hope and work at living a life that is full of hope, of joy and of peace.
I love this line... Hope secretly feeds and strengthens promise.
So much truth in that. God promised us a future, he promised us he had a plan to not harm us but to give us a hope and a future. Our hope, our belief that it will get better...that is what feeds and strengthens God's promise
Thursday, December 5, 2013
He Gave us Hope
I had something entirely different to write about today but after misplacing (sort of) the notes I had already made on what I planned to write about I decided to write something different. And this time I am stealing from another blog entry I wrote for parts of it (for the most part what you see in italics is from a past blog)
Recently one of the twin loss groups I am sort a ‘creeper’ of… I don’t post there too often, there have been so many posts about faith such as ‘Why do people say ‘God answers our prayers’? He didn’t answer mine.’ Or ‘Why do people keep telling me that God gave me the strength to get through this? I don’t want the strength, I don’t want to get through it. I want my child back’.
There were many comments to these posts but most were along the same theme and were not really filled with answers or help to cope etc. I knew that I had written about this subject before and so I searched through my blog until I found it. I posted it and within hours I had many who had read it and many who had commented on it…with thanks for the way I presented it.
It is so hard to find hope after loss. It is so hard to understand God when you hate the life you are living now because of the loss. I know, I struggled with it too. I struggled to find hope when all seemed so hopeless and I struggled to understand the whys of it all. But I did find my way out of that darkness. So when these ladies posted with such hopelessness my heart ached for them. I want them to know the God I know, the one that holds me when I can't stand anymore, the one who wipes my tears when the pour down my face as I look at ultrasound pictures, read things I wrote during my pregnancy, look at pictures of my son's broken and battered body. I wanted them to know the Jesus I know… the one who came to take my son home when no other healing could happen, who healed his body in the best way possible. The Jesus that that has lead me back to God time and time again when I have struggled and questioned. In the past I have told my grieving online firiends... God loves you so much and understands your pain...he lost a son, he knows this pain. He knows what we don't ...he knows just how much we can handle and he is there to hold us up when we can't stand anymore." But I know how hard it is to hear the voices at times when your heart is broken. I get it. And sadly so do others in our groups who also are struggling to make sense of it all, to find God in all of this. Another mom wrote about her how hard it was to get her head around why a loving God would give her so many trials... take her parents from her when she was very young and then take her beautiful baby. It made no sense to her and it makes no sense to so many of those who are grieving. They feel God has no right to do this and can not get past the reminder of what they are missing out on, especially when you are raising your angel's identical twins. They just feel so abandoned by God, like God has let them down, like they have angered God and he is punishing them. Like God hates them.
And when I blogged this the first time I wrote that I struggled to find the right words to say and then, by divine intervention, a book was placed in my path with the perfect s words…
It is called Through Every Storm and is one I just randomly picked up off the shelf in the church library. It is about a couple who lose a two year old child in a choking accident and how they both struggle afterwards, how hard it is for them to grieve... and eventually how they both come to Christ because of it. In it their marriage falls apart and they end up in a sort of separation situation.
Her father comes to speak to his son-in-law and instead of reprimanding him for all that he has done wrong, instead of showing one sided support of his daughter, he instead confesses that he, too, has experienced the loss of a child. It was a child that had been conceived out of wedlock and had been stillborn. His words were so powerful.... "We felt sure God was punishing us for our terrible mistake, our awful sin (when they could not conceive another child for 4 years after getting married to each other a few years after the baby had died). Later in life, when we gave our lives to Christ, we discovered some amazing things about His grace and forgiveness. We didn't realize until later just how much He loved us in spite of our imperfections."
Powerful enough but the next part really hit home in what I wanted to say to those struggling... needed to hear myself at times... " God does not deliberately bring on despair and grief as a means of getting back at us for our wrongdoing. He does allow circumstances to to enter our lives that will draw us closer to Him though." "I believe God wants much more for you"... It's time you learned to trust Him. He's not out to hurt you. In fact, just the opposite. He wants to guide you, give you direction for your life, help heal your past hurts".
And this is what really drew me to repost parts of this blog. God wants to guide us, he wants to help us heal, he wants to give us hope. He never wants us to hurt but he also knows that the hurt brings us to a place where we need to rely on Him to help us get through, to pick us up, dust us off and guide us down the next path.
Later in the book a pastor speaks on the same theme and once again God spoke to me with ideas of what I wanted to say to those who are struggling with their feelings about what has happened in their lives. So often people are troubled by tragedy...I know that I was. You can't understand why God allows it. How often do we hear 'why do bad things always happen to good people'? The fact is that evil surrounds us. What I never realized until earlier this year when I truly read Genesis and studied what happened there on that fateful day in the garden of Eden is that is where evil began but that God knew all along that it could happen. He created Adam and Eve with free will just as he creates us with free will. They chose to disobey and since that day their choice, the results of their original sin has continued to plague us. But one thing is so so so very clear to me...GOD DOES NOT CAUSE EVIL...but he does allow it. Evil entered the world on the very day that Adam stood by and let Eve be taken in by the snake. Evil began when Eve took that first bite and then convinced Adam to do the same. But God understands what a problematic world we live in and he wants us to live victoriously in it. He gave us Jesus so that our sins could be forgiven because he knew we could not do it alone.
He gave us Jesus to give us hope. Jesus is our hope….
28 "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28
It is so hard to know what to do when your heart is so wounded, when you feel so lost. So often we look for the answers in the wrong places and you wait for something to happen that will fill us full of hope and peace. I know that I did that for a great many months after we lost Cole. I kept thinking that I knew the reason things happened. I knew why we were experiencing this, the lesson we were to learn... I mean it had to have been to make us work better as a family and damn it why couldn't Geoff figure that out, why did he have to call me day after day with complaints about how hard it was for him with the boys and the house and.... Yeah...I was so sure that I had it all figured out and I never listened to voice of the spirit telling me to open my heart to him. I think as children and young adults...heck even as older adults that we are taught to look for God through the 'good things' in our lives...job satisfaction, success, popularity, dedication to a church etc.
We seem to think that if we are doing good that God gives us good things and if we aren't getting what we want then we think He must think we are bad. We are often lead to believe that if we live a life of service, do good deeds, go to church, donate money, help others and say we believe in God that we are doing what we need to do to ensure our place in Heaven. When we question what God is doing in our lives then we question if Heaven even exits. But Jesus tells us in his word that He is the answer to our deepest longings. Only He can relieve us of that heavy load of guilt and sin we carry around. Only He can lift the burdens we carry, the sorrows that fill our hearts. If we turn to him and tell him how we feel, tell him how lost we are, how guilty we feel, how confused, angry, bitter etc... if we tell him he will not be surprised... he already knows. He knows what burdens we carry and he just wants us to hand them to him. He is just waiting for us to come to the cross and lay them down at his feet. It may not ever be easy to understand why things happen.
Once again I say…Jesus is our hope…
It may never make sense and it may hurt forever... God never said it would be easy and never promised our lives would be free of pain. But he did promise us salvation and an opportunity to see our loved ones again if only we could accept that Jesus came and died for us so that we could live eternally and commit our lives to trying to follow his teachings. Doesn't mean you can't question, doesn't mean you won't be angry, doesn't mean your life will be without sorrow. But it does mean that one day your life will be filled with much joy, hope and peace.
Recently one of the twin loss groups I am sort a ‘creeper’ of… I don’t post there too often, there have been so many posts about faith such as ‘Why do people say ‘God answers our prayers’? He didn’t answer mine.’ Or ‘Why do people keep telling me that God gave me the strength to get through this? I don’t want the strength, I don’t want to get through it. I want my child back’.
There were many comments to these posts but most were along the same theme and were not really filled with answers or help to cope etc. I knew that I had written about this subject before and so I searched through my blog until I found it. I posted it and within hours I had many who had read it and many who had commented on it…with thanks for the way I presented it.
It is so hard to find hope after loss. It is so hard to understand God when you hate the life you are living now because of the loss. I know, I struggled with it too. I struggled to find hope when all seemed so hopeless and I struggled to understand the whys of it all. But I did find my way out of that darkness. So when these ladies posted with such hopelessness my heart ached for them. I want them to know the God I know, the one that holds me when I can't stand anymore, the one who wipes my tears when the pour down my face as I look at ultrasound pictures, read things I wrote during my pregnancy, look at pictures of my son's broken and battered body. I wanted them to know the Jesus I know… the one who came to take my son home when no other healing could happen, who healed his body in the best way possible. The Jesus that that has lead me back to God time and time again when I have struggled and questioned. In the past I have told my grieving online firiends... God loves you so much and understands your pain...he lost a son, he knows this pain. He knows what we don't ...he knows just how much we can handle and he is there to hold us up when we can't stand anymore." But I know how hard it is to hear the voices at times when your heart is broken. I get it. And sadly so do others in our groups who also are struggling to make sense of it all, to find God in all of this. Another mom wrote about her how hard it was to get her head around why a loving God would give her so many trials... take her parents from her when she was very young and then take her beautiful baby. It made no sense to her and it makes no sense to so many of those who are grieving. They feel God has no right to do this and can not get past the reminder of what they are missing out on, especially when you are raising your angel's identical twins. They just feel so abandoned by God, like God has let them down, like they have angered God and he is punishing them. Like God hates them.
And when I blogged this the first time I wrote that I struggled to find the right words to say and then, by divine intervention, a book was placed in my path with the perfect s words…
It is called Through Every Storm and is one I just randomly picked up off the shelf in the church library. It is about a couple who lose a two year old child in a choking accident and how they both struggle afterwards, how hard it is for them to grieve... and eventually how they both come to Christ because of it. In it their marriage falls apart and they end up in a sort of separation situation.
Her father comes to speak to his son-in-law and instead of reprimanding him for all that he has done wrong, instead of showing one sided support of his daughter, he instead confesses that he, too, has experienced the loss of a child. It was a child that had been conceived out of wedlock and had been stillborn. His words were so powerful.... "We felt sure God was punishing us for our terrible mistake, our awful sin (when they could not conceive another child for 4 years after getting married to each other a few years after the baby had died). Later in life, when we gave our lives to Christ, we discovered some amazing things about His grace and forgiveness. We didn't realize until later just how much He loved us in spite of our imperfections."
Powerful enough but the next part really hit home in what I wanted to say to those struggling... needed to hear myself at times... " God does not deliberately bring on despair and grief as a means of getting back at us for our wrongdoing. He does allow circumstances to to enter our lives that will draw us closer to Him though." "I believe God wants much more for you"... It's time you learned to trust Him. He's not out to hurt you. In fact, just the opposite. He wants to guide you, give you direction for your life, help heal your past hurts".
And this is what really drew me to repost parts of this blog. God wants to guide us, he wants to help us heal, he wants to give us hope. He never wants us to hurt but he also knows that the hurt brings us to a place where we need to rely on Him to help us get through, to pick us up, dust us off and guide us down the next path.
Later in the book a pastor speaks on the same theme and once again God spoke to me with ideas of what I wanted to say to those who are struggling with their feelings about what has happened in their lives. So often people are troubled by tragedy...I know that I was. You can't understand why God allows it. How often do we hear 'why do bad things always happen to good people'? The fact is that evil surrounds us. What I never realized until earlier this year when I truly read Genesis and studied what happened there on that fateful day in the garden of Eden is that is where evil began but that God knew all along that it could happen. He created Adam and Eve with free will just as he creates us with free will. They chose to disobey and since that day their choice, the results of their original sin has continued to plague us. But one thing is so so so very clear to me...GOD DOES NOT CAUSE EVIL...but he does allow it. Evil entered the world on the very day that Adam stood by and let Eve be taken in by the snake. Evil began when Eve took that first bite and then convinced Adam to do the same. But God understands what a problematic world we live in and he wants us to live victoriously in it. He gave us Jesus so that our sins could be forgiven because he knew we could not do it alone.
He gave us Jesus to give us hope. Jesus is our hope….
28 "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28
It is so hard to know what to do when your heart is so wounded, when you feel so lost. So often we look for the answers in the wrong places and you wait for something to happen that will fill us full of hope and peace. I know that I did that for a great many months after we lost Cole. I kept thinking that I knew the reason things happened. I knew why we were experiencing this, the lesson we were to learn... I mean it had to have been to make us work better as a family and damn it why couldn't Geoff figure that out, why did he have to call me day after day with complaints about how hard it was for him with the boys and the house and.... Yeah...I was so sure that I had it all figured out and I never listened to voice of the spirit telling me to open my heart to him. I think as children and young adults...heck even as older adults that we are taught to look for God through the 'good things' in our lives...job satisfaction, success, popularity, dedication to a church etc.
We seem to think that if we are doing good that God gives us good things and if we aren't getting what we want then we think He must think we are bad. We are often lead to believe that if we live a life of service, do good deeds, go to church, donate money, help others and say we believe in God that we are doing what we need to do to ensure our place in Heaven. When we question what God is doing in our lives then we question if Heaven even exits. But Jesus tells us in his word that He is the answer to our deepest longings. Only He can relieve us of that heavy load of guilt and sin we carry around. Only He can lift the burdens we carry, the sorrows that fill our hearts. If we turn to him and tell him how we feel, tell him how lost we are, how guilty we feel, how confused, angry, bitter etc... if we tell him he will not be surprised... he already knows. He knows what burdens we carry and he just wants us to hand them to him. He is just waiting for us to come to the cross and lay them down at his feet. It may not ever be easy to understand why things happen.
Once again I say…Jesus is our hope…
It may never make sense and it may hurt forever... God never said it would be easy and never promised our lives would be free of pain. But he did promise us salvation and an opportunity to see our loved ones again if only we could accept that Jesus came and died for us so that we could live eternally and commit our lives to trying to follow his teachings. Doesn't mean you can't question, doesn't mean you won't be angry, doesn't mean your life will be without sorrow. But it does mean that one day your life will be filled with much joy, hope and peace.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Everyone needs something to believe in
I decided today to post some movie clips that speak of hope. I went on a hunt and found two that really suited my needs.
http://www.wingclips.com/movie-clips/rango/believe-in-something
I haven't actually seen this movie but I love when the old turtle shows the lizard (gecko, iguana???) the town.
"You see them, Mr Rango? All my friends and neighbors. It's a hard life here. Very hard. Do you know how they make it through each and everyday? They believe. They believe it's going to be better. The believe that the water will come. They believe against all odds and evidence that tomorrow will be better than today."
And that is exactly what hope is. The belief that, against all odds sometimes, better times will come. I think that's about all that got me through some of the darkest days after Cole passed away... the hope that it couldn't get any worse than it was right then and there. I remember when my water broke and I woke Geoff up. I said to him, 'when will this nightmare end' but I never cried, I never truly feared anything for Cameron. I had this sense of hope, this sense that everything was going to be ok...that it couldn't get worse so it had to get better.
http://www.wingclips.com/movie-clips/the-war/billys-resurrection
http://www.wingclips.com/movie-clips/rango/believe-in-something
I haven't actually seen this movie but I love when the old turtle shows the lizard (gecko, iguana???) the town.
"You see them, Mr Rango? All my friends and neighbors. It's a hard life here. Very hard. Do you know how they make it through each and everyday? They believe. They believe it's going to be better. The believe that the water will come. They believe against all odds and evidence that tomorrow will be better than today."
And that is exactly what hope is. The belief that, against all odds sometimes, better times will come. I think that's about all that got me through some of the darkest days after Cole passed away... the hope that it couldn't get any worse than it was right then and there. I remember when my water broke and I woke Geoff up. I said to him, 'when will this nightmare end' but I never cried, I never truly feared anything for Cameron. I had this sense of hope, this sense that everything was going to be ok...that it couldn't get worse so it had to get better.
http://www.wingclips.com/movie-clips/the-war/billys-resurrection
This video is from a movie I'd never even heard of. It gave me mixed emotions as I wrote about hope...because I had such hope that both my boys would live and they didn't. But this movie shows that determined hope that wraps itself around us sometimes and won't let us give up, won't let us listen to others when they tell us to give up. Stu is so obviously still hurting from losing his father and looked up to him so much. He begs Billy to breath telling him that his Daddy says that people can do things that they put their heart to as long as they believe they can. His faith in God is interesting... he begs him not to take Billy the way he took his Dad. It shows that he is still filled with the hope that the end prize is time with God, that God is ultimately good.
But the biggest display of hope comes in the clip when Billy breathes and shares with his friends that he saw an angel who held his hand and, though Billy thought he was going to stay and live in this kingdom, the angel told him to go back and take care of his dad. The faces of the other children tells it all, it shows that hope. And when it becomes very clear that the angel was Stu's dad this hope, this certainty that life is never truly over but rather continues in heaven, is renewed and strengthened in all the children. This hope that we will see our loved ones again is strengthened in all who view this I think.
It's what has gotten me through many difficult times, many times where I just can't understand how this can be my life, why I am the one who gets to be the mommy of an angel and his identical twin instead of two identical twins here on earth. The hope that I will see him again and that I will live forever in 'His Kingdom' is really all I have sometimes.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Living With Hope
I have blogged about hope so much. I likely don't need to write anything new this year about hope...I could just cut and paste. But that's not me, it's not the point of this project. I also want to share some of the things that have happened this year, some of the realizations I've come and some of the feelings I have that might be new...or renewed.
This past year has been another tough one in our house and yet it has been so filled with hope. So many can't understand how I can even say that. So many look at my life and tell me that they don't know how I do it and that they admire me for the way I just keep going.
REALLY??? Exactly what choice do you have when things are hard in your life. Exactly what would they do different if they were in my shoes? I am sure some who are part of my 'real' life have some great answers here but they aren't walking in my shoes. Sure it's hard to be the breadwinner on the salary I make, sure it's hard to manage when there is only one income coming in.... which has been the case for 1/3 of this year I would guess. Even harder is managing the moments where the enemy gets in and either pushes things beyond the breaking point and chaos ensues voices erupt and horrible words are said or the enemy fills one of us with such doubts that it seems easier to shut down, shut out the world...simply be selfish.
But you know what keeps me going...what for it... wait for it... yup, it's HOPE!
One of my favourite scriptures is this one...
So often we think we can do it alone. So often we get frustrated or impatient. This was the case with me about 2 weeks ago. I had had enough, I felt spent, done, exhausted, so very frustrated and, I guess, hopeless. And I let rip with some things that weren't very honouring. But as quick as I did it, I apologized, I retreated and then did 2 things that I don't normally do... I took a break, a deep breath and prayed and I listened. For once I could really hear what was being said to me, for once I really felt listened to.
And after that I felt so full of...well hope. I felt so certain that we could and would make it through. I felt so focused and so in control of the things that were causing excessive chaos in our life. I persevered as did my faith. I prayed for the things we needed, for things to fall into place and I felt such a sense of hope, so very certain that we would make it through this trial just fine because God always looks after his children.
And then a few days ago God answered prayers that we'd been saying for weeks...well months actually and guess what...I wasn't surprised at all. I felt blessed but I wasn't surprised.
You see God knows, he sees everything that we are doing. He has his hand in all parts of our life and tries his best to guide us to follow his ways.
It's all in his plan and all we have to do is trust him. Yeah...all we have to do. So much easier said then done, I know. But when we do we can keep focused on the goal, focused on the 'prize'... we know our current circumstances won't harm us in such a way as to keep us from God, keep us from eternity. When we trust God then we have the hope that there is eternity.
This past year has been another tough one in our house and yet it has been so filled with hope. So many can't understand how I can even say that. So many look at my life and tell me that they don't know how I do it and that they admire me for the way I just keep going.
REALLY??? Exactly what choice do you have when things are hard in your life. Exactly what would they do different if they were in my shoes? I am sure some who are part of my 'real' life have some great answers here but they aren't walking in my shoes. Sure it's hard to be the breadwinner on the salary I make, sure it's hard to manage when there is only one income coming in.... which has been the case for 1/3 of this year I would guess. Even harder is managing the moments where the enemy gets in and either pushes things beyond the breaking point and chaos ensues voices erupt and horrible words are said or the enemy fills one of us with such doubts that it seems easier to shut down, shut out the world...simply be selfish.
But you know what keeps me going...what for it... wait for it... yup, it's HOPE!
One of my favourite scriptures is this one...
James 1:2-4
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
Why is it a favourite? Because it speaks of this hope....let's be truly honest and blunt...the hope that this crap that is your life will be gone...soon. Because it shows that God is allowing this test as a way to bring us closer to him. The only way to get through the trials is to lean on the Lord, to have Hope that they will be over soon, to trust God to walk through them with you.So often we think we can do it alone. So often we get frustrated or impatient. This was the case with me about 2 weeks ago. I had had enough, I felt spent, done, exhausted, so very frustrated and, I guess, hopeless. And I let rip with some things that weren't very honouring. But as quick as I did it, I apologized, I retreated and then did 2 things that I don't normally do... I took a break, a deep breath and prayed and I listened. For once I could really hear what was being said to me, for once I really felt listened to.
And after that I felt so full of...well hope. I felt so certain that we could and would make it through. I felt so focused and so in control of the things that were causing excessive chaos in our life. I persevered as did my faith. I prayed for the things we needed, for things to fall into place and I felt such a sense of hope, so very certain that we would make it through this trial just fine because God always looks after his children.
And then a few days ago God answered prayers that we'd been saying for weeks...well months actually and guess what...I wasn't surprised at all. I felt blessed but I wasn't surprised.
You see God knows, he sees everything that we are doing. He has his hand in all parts of our life and tries his best to guide us to follow his ways.
Jeremiah 29:11
11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Monday, December 2, 2013
I Hope You Dance
Just a simple song today...my hope for my kids and for myself at times too. Times have gotten dark for all of us, especially in the months after we lost Cole. Songs like this reminded me to keep moving for them and for me.
"I Hope You Dance"
I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,
May you never take one single breath for granted,
GOD forbid love ever leave you empty handed,
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
I hope you dance....I hope you dance.
I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Livin' might mean takin' chances but they're worth takin',
Lovin' might be a mistake but it's worth makin',
Don't let some hell bent heart leave you bitter,
When you come close to sellin' out reconsider,
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
I hope you dance....I hope you dance.
I hope you dance....I hope you dance.
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along,
Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone.)
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
Dance....I hope you dance.
I hope you dance....I hope you dance.
I hope you dance....I hope you dance..
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along
Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone)
Sunday, December 1, 2013
The best hope we have
Yikes, it's the first of December... 24 days til the big day and there so much left to do.
Anyone else feel like this??? Well today was the first of our holiday celebrations as we attended our first Christmas party, had our first visit with the big guy. But that really isn't the important part of today, is it?
It's the first Sunday of advent... time to prepare ourselves for the celebration of birth of Jesus and time to prepare ourselves for His second coming, for the time he will return as he promised he would. It's time to celebrate all that this amazing miracle gift that our Lord gave us is.
John 3:16 - For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
Now if that's not the greatest hope there is I don't know what is. It's only been in the last two years that I have realized how absolutely amazing the season of Christmas is. It has nothing to do with spending time with family and friends, showing others how much you love and appreciate them with gifts...but that is obvious. We so often hear that we need to remember 'the reason for the season' but how many really understand that reason??? I know I didn't. I knew we celebrated the birth of Jesus at Christmas. I knew the story of Mary and Joseph...heck I even remembered the story of Elizabeth, Zechariah and John the Baptist. I loved the story of the first Christmas and felt I understood what a miracle it was.
But I never realized until two years ago just how absolutely amazing this story is. Jesus was born to a woman who had never had 'marital relations' with a man. He was the son of God, not of man...but yet was as human as those he lived among. He came to teach the world about the love of God. He did this through stories, parables and miracle healing. He changed the way people thought, he made them consider what they did, what they valued, how they viewed themselves and others.
But more then that, he came to die. He was born to die. God brought his son into this world so that we, all of humanity, might have a future. He brought Jesus to the world to teach others of his love, to instruct and lead followers who could carry on after his son would face the death he knew would be his destiny. He brought his son into this world knowing the world would kill him. He brought his son into this world knowing that his son, Jesus, would be resurrected after death and that act in itself would show the love God had for all his children.
Eternal life is my hope. Jesus is my hope. It's as simple as that.
I will get into abit more of this later this week but I will share a 'story' of sorts about my hope for eternal life changing how I grieved, changing how I lived in grief.
When we began planning Cole's memorial service I reached out to my friends at Fetal Health, Lonnie and Tammy as well as a few others that assisted with grief support through them, to get help, suggestions, ideas of what to do to honour this life that ended much too soon. It was suggested I read a book by another TTTS mom who also lost one of her twins called A Place of Peace.
I remember very clearly sitting in my living room while Cameron slept him my arms and I read this book from cover to cover. As I neared the end I read how Jenny Hander, the author, had come to realize what she needed to do to move on, which for her was to look at her daughter's life as being one filled with innocence, devoid of pain and without the emotional, stressful and sometimes cruel impacts of our earthly life and to realize that going straight to paradise is such an amazing thing. And as I read this I was completely overcome with emotion, with joy and peace for my son and with fear for myself. Fear that I might not ever see him again because I wasn't living my life in a way that was honouring to God, in a way that would lead me to heaven. I dropped to my knees and I sobbed. I sobbed for all I had lost in losing my son but more then that, I sobbed for all I had lost in the way I had let grief run my life... the joy of my children, the love of my husband, family and friends. I realized that I was so self absorbed in my grief that I was shutting everyone, even God, out of my life. And so I told God how sorry I was and how much I wanted him in my life so that I would make it to heaven and see Cole again.
Back then it was all about seeing Cole again. Heaven was an awesome place, a place I wanted to live in a way as to get there but it never really occurred to me then that Heaven wasn't just about the people who had gone before me but it was about THE ONE who had gone before me...and the reason I might get to go at all.
Jesus gave me a renewed sense of life. He walked beside me the whole time but once I knew he was there, once I invited him into my heart, he lifted me up and pushed more forwards. He made me realize that there IS hope in death because death is just an end our earthly lives, it's the beginning of our eternal lives.
I found hope in Jesus...I find hope in Jesus.
Anyone else feel like this??? Well today was the first of our holiday celebrations as we attended our first Christmas party, had our first visit with the big guy. But that really isn't the important part of today, is it?
It's the first Sunday of advent... time to prepare ourselves for the celebration of birth of Jesus and time to prepare ourselves for His second coming, for the time he will return as he promised he would. It's time to celebrate all that this amazing miracle gift that our Lord gave us is.
John 3:16 - For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
Now if that's not the greatest hope there is I don't know what is. It's only been in the last two years that I have realized how absolutely amazing the season of Christmas is. It has nothing to do with spending time with family and friends, showing others how much you love and appreciate them with gifts...but that is obvious. We so often hear that we need to remember 'the reason for the season' but how many really understand that reason??? I know I didn't. I knew we celebrated the birth of Jesus at Christmas. I knew the story of Mary and Joseph...heck I even remembered the story of Elizabeth, Zechariah and John the Baptist. I loved the story of the first Christmas and felt I understood what a miracle it was.
But I never realized until two years ago just how absolutely amazing this story is. Jesus was born to a woman who had never had 'marital relations' with a man. He was the son of God, not of man...but yet was as human as those he lived among. He came to teach the world about the love of God. He did this through stories, parables and miracle healing. He changed the way people thought, he made them consider what they did, what they valued, how they viewed themselves and others.
But more then that, he came to die. He was born to die. God brought his son into this world so that we, all of humanity, might have a future. He brought Jesus to the world to teach others of his love, to instruct and lead followers who could carry on after his son would face the death he knew would be his destiny. He brought his son into this world knowing the world would kill him. He brought his son into this world knowing that his son, Jesus, would be resurrected after death and that act in itself would show the love God had for all his children.
Eternal life is my hope. Jesus is my hope. It's as simple as that.
I will get into abit more of this later this week but I will share a 'story' of sorts about my hope for eternal life changing how I grieved, changing how I lived in grief.
When we began planning Cole's memorial service I reached out to my friends at Fetal Health, Lonnie and Tammy as well as a few others that assisted with grief support through them, to get help, suggestions, ideas of what to do to honour this life that ended much too soon. It was suggested I read a book by another TTTS mom who also lost one of her twins called A Place of Peace.
I remember very clearly sitting in my living room while Cameron slept him my arms and I read this book from cover to cover. As I neared the end I read how Jenny Hander, the author, had come to realize what she needed to do to move on, which for her was to look at her daughter's life as being one filled with innocence, devoid of pain and without the emotional, stressful and sometimes cruel impacts of our earthly life and to realize that going straight to paradise is such an amazing thing. And as I read this I was completely overcome with emotion, with joy and peace for my son and with fear for myself. Fear that I might not ever see him again because I wasn't living my life in a way that was honouring to God, in a way that would lead me to heaven. I dropped to my knees and I sobbed. I sobbed for all I had lost in losing my son but more then that, I sobbed for all I had lost in the way I had let grief run my life... the joy of my children, the love of my husband, family and friends. I realized that I was so self absorbed in my grief that I was shutting everyone, even God, out of my life. And so I told God how sorry I was and how much I wanted him in my life so that I would make it to heaven and see Cole again.
Back then it was all about seeing Cole again. Heaven was an awesome place, a place I wanted to live in a way as to get there but it never really occurred to me then that Heaven wasn't just about the people who had gone before me but it was about THE ONE who had gone before me...and the reason I might get to go at all.
Jesus gave me a renewed sense of life. He walked beside me the whole time but once I knew he was there, once I invited him into my heart, he lifted me up and pushed more forwards. He made me realize that there IS hope in death because death is just an end our earthly lives, it's the beginning of our eternal lives.
I found hope in Jesus...I find hope in Jesus.
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