God is the Faithful Father watching and waiting with open arms for the Prodigal to return.
He will weave even the darkest and most tangled threads of my life into a beautiful, redeemed tapestry if I let Him.
He’s the God who stays.
Read the rest here: The God Who Stays
See, here’s the thing: to the outside world, my son’s death happened at a single point in time.
But to me, his death is a continuous event.
I must lift the cup of sorrow every day to parched lips. I must choose to take it to the One Who can help me lift it.
Jesus knows this cup.
Read the rest here: My Cup Overflows
Life is full of storms.
Some are outside myself and others start in the secret corners of my own heart.
All of them make me wish for quiet and calm, peaceful waters where I can sail the ship of life and not worry about sinking beneath the waves.
When I’m afraid I remind myself that Jesus is the Peace Speaker.
Read the rest here: Sea Of Love And Goodness
Most of the time I’m just kind of rolling along.
There are things to do, places to go, people to see, animals to feed.
I get up, get going and get on with it.
But there are some days that are what I call “Hard Stops” on this journey. They are the days that force my heart to take special notice of the fact that Dominic isn’t here.
Read the rest here: Hard Stops: When You Can’t Ignore the Missing
Sometimes people ask, “How can you cling to Jesus when He could have saved your son, but didn’t?”
I give the same answer Peter gave, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
He is light and life in the Valley and on the hilltop, in the fire and in the flood.
Read the rest here: There’s Hope in Every Scar
I like to think of Dominic surrounded by songs and sounds of unimaginable beauty. So I count the days, and I count it joy that I will see him again.
I can hear him saying, “Do you really believe, Mom?”
Read the rest here: Prisoner Of Hope
Yes, “all things work together for good for those that love the Lord” but not all things ARE good.
My son’s death is not a test, a lesson, a trial nor a hammer in the hand of God sent to pound me into the shape He desires for me.
It is an evil that He can and is using for good.
Read the rest here: Grief is Not a Hammer in the Hand of God
I didn’t grow up doing in-depth Bible studies so when I “discovered” the Bible in my early twenties, it was an exciting adventure to dig for treasure in the Word of God.
Along with Scripture itself, I devoured book after book on theology.
I could not get enough.
By my mid-thirties I had developed a fairly well-defined and defensible doctrine. I really thought I understood how God works in the world.
Then my son died.
Read the rest here: On My Worst Days, Mustard Seed Faith is Enough
Life after child loss is full of seeming contradictions.
I am broken yet God is redeeming those fragments and reassembling a life of beauty and meaning.
The cracks are visible but they haven’t disqualified me as a vessel that can hold His love, His grace, His mercy and pour all that out on others.
I’m often scared, but am able to walk into each day brave in the knowledge I don’t walk alone.
Read the rest here: Scared and Brave: Reaching For Jesus in the Midst of Sorrow
I have doubts some days too.
There are moments when suffering washes over me like a flood and I am swept under with the tide.
It’s then I cling tenaciously to the promise that my wounds, like Christ’s, will one day not only be proof of pain but also evidence of God’s redemptive power.
Read the rest here: On Suffering and Redemption
