Tag: trust

Grief Work 2024: Faith and Truth

Have you ever walked away from a conversation and thought, “My goodness! I talked WAY too much”?

I have.

I can become so wrapped up in sharing my own experience, spilling my own feelings, trying to communicate my own point of view that I don’t leave space for the other person to get a word in edgewise.

Sometimes I do the same thing when talking to God-I can’t stop chattering long enough to hear what He wants to speak into my pain.

When I choose to listen, He is faithful to remind me of truth. He is faithful to lead me to the green pastures of His word where I can feast on His promises and be filled with hope.

❤ Melanie

“I wake before the morning light.  Every. single. morning.

I get my coffee, sit in my chair and wait for sunrise.

I never worry that today it might not happen.

I’m never concerned that after all these years of faithfulness, this day may be the one where daylight fails to make an appearance.

There is no fear in this darkness because I know it will not last forever.

Morning is coming.

Morning. Is. Coming.

And that’s the hope I cling to in this longer darkness of the Valley of the Shadow of Death-no matter how many years it may be, the Valley has an end.

Read the rest here: Trust After Loss: Access the Truth

Grief Work 2024: Faith and Pain

For those of us who follow Jesus, perhaps the most difficult and important grief work we must do is deciding how our faith fits into the new and awful reality of child loss.

I’ve encountered so many hurting hearts struggling to square their experience of devastating loss with their faith in a loving and all-powerful God.

I write about my own struggle over and over in this space but this series of posts is an orderly exploration of doubt, pain, faith and the hope I’ve found in Christ Jesus.

I pray it helps another heart hold on.

❤ Melanie

Child loss is Unnatural-no way around it.

Out of order death is devastating.

When my perfectly healthy, strong and gifted son was killed instantly in a motorcycle accident on April 12. 2014 my world fell apart.  My heart shattered into a million pieces.  And after almost eight years, I’ve yet to even FIND all of those pieces much less put them back together.

So what does a heart do when that happens?  Because, try as I might, I cannot stop time. 

Even THAT awful day only lasted 24 hours.

When the sun rose again, the pain was still there.  And behind that pain and mixed with it was something else-disappointment, disaffection, distrust.

Read the rest here: Trust After Loss: Admit the Pain

Advent 2023: [Nearly] Blind Trust

It was one thing for Mary, who saw the angel Gabriel and was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit to have confidence that the growing child inside her belly was the Son of God.

It was quite another for Joseph, her betrothed, to take her word for it.

Contrary to the way we like to imagine “the olden days” intimate liaisons before marriage were just as common then as now. Betrothed couples were considered married in every way except physical consummation of the relationship. And not everyone waited for the final ceremony.

Read the rest here: Advent: [Nearly] Blind Trust

Breathe Out, Breathe In-The Power of Lament to Make Room for Thanksgiving

When I first began writing in this space, “lament” had only just come into vogue.

Now, it’s everywhere.

If the past couple years have taught hearts a single thing, I hope it is there’s no use pretending life doesn’t hurt sometimes. We were not created to carry that kind of pain alone.

And thankfully, we don’t have to.

God, in Christ, invites me to speak it, to sing it, to release it as an exhale so His grace and strength can rush in to fill that empty space.

You’re invited too.

❤ Melanie

Thanksgiving was always my favorite holiday.

I loved everything about it,

Read the rest here: The Power of Lament to Make Room for Thanksgiving

Trusting Again After Loss: Appropriate God’s Strength

My friend and fellow bereaved mom, Margaret Franklin, Ryan’s mom, shared a beautiful Dutch word with me “Sterkte” (pronounced STAIRK-tah).

It literally translates “strength” or “power” but culturally means much more.  It means bravery, strength, fortitude and endurance in the face of fear and insumountable odds through the empowering strength of God in me.

Not MY strength, but HIS.

It’s the strength Isaiah meant when he wrote:

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Isaiah 40:31 KJV

This is what it means to appropriate God’s strength:  

I have to exhale my doubts, inhale His truth and then allow His Spirit to weave that truth into armor so that I am strong for battle.

Read the rest here: Trust After Loss: Appropriate God’s Strength

Trusting Again After Loss: Access the Truth

“I wake before the morning light.  Every. single. morning.

I get my coffee, sit in my chair and wait for sunrise.

I never worry that today it might not happen.

I’m never concerned that after all these years of faithfulness, this day may be the one where daylight fails to make an appearance.

There is no fear in this darkness because I know it will not last forever.

Morning is coming.

Morning. Is. Coming.

And that’s the hope I cling to in this longer darkness of the Valley of the Shadow of Death-no matter how many years it may be, the Valley has an end.

Read the rest here: Trust After Loss: Access the Truth

Trusting Again After Loss: Acknowledge Doubt, Ask Questions

Grief forces me to walk Relentlessly Forward  even when I long to go back.

I can’t stop the clock or the sun or the days rolling by.

Those of us who are more than a couple months along in this journey (or any journey that involves tragedy and loss) know that it is ABSOLUTELY POSSIBLE to feel worse than in the first few days.

Because as the edges of the fog lift and the reality of an entire lifetime looms before you the questions form and the doubt sinks in:

Where ARE You God?

Why don’t You DO something?

Are You even LISTENING?

Read the rest here: Trust After Loss: Acknowledge Doubt and Ask Questions

You Gotta Dig the Well Before You are Thirsty!

It’s been a long time since I’ve shared this piece.

Sometimes even my favorites get lost in the thousands (!) of daily posts but I found this one again recently and was again reminded of the truth that there is NO substitute for filling your heart and mind with Scripture BEFORE you might desperately need it.

When the deputy rang my doorbell and my heart was shattered, I didn’t receive mysterious whispered comfort nor was I cloaked in a miraculous sense of peace.

I was, instead, immediately filled to overflowing with words of life, hope, and love bubbling from the spring I’d been tending to in my soul for decades.

Nothing new but everything eternally true.

The faithful, unchangeable and never-failing character of my Shepherd King is how I carry on.

❤ Melanie

I am not a fan of church signs.

Most of the time they try to be cute and reduce eternal truth to a few words that often leave room for [mis]interpretaion.

But I saw one today that I DID like:  “Dig the well before you are thirsty”.

It takes time to dig a well.  

And it’s hard work.  

You can’t wake up one morning, decide to dig and expect results in a couple of hours. If you want a reliable source of water to quench your thirst you have to plan ahead.

Read the rest here: Dig the Well BEFORE You are Thirsty

Some Things Are Worth Fighting For: I Will Not Be Moved

I’m not brave by nature.

If I have a choice, I will run every time.  But there are just some things worth fighting for.

My family is one of them.

I will not let the enemy have them.

I will not allow despair to overtake us, fear to bind us, hopelessness to sap our strength.

I will not let death win.

Read the rest here: I Will Not Be Moved

This Is NOT What I Had Planned

I don’t get to choose.

I don’t get to plan the way life is going to be.

Oh, I bring out the calendar and mark down the days:  birthdays, holidays, special events and obligations.

But then one dark morning a knock stops the clock and makes the world spin faster all at once.

I’m suspended and plunged under in the same breath.

Read the rest here: Not What I Had Planned