hope — raisingthreeknightsandaprincess.com

I was fine today.

Until…

I read Scooper’s post – Living Free Through Our Unfixable Days

Until…

I found my mom’s obituary in a pile of photographs from NC. Her face smiling up at me from a piece of newspaper torn from it’s page. The ache to reach through the veil and touch her hand is all consuming in my deepest grieving. Knowing I could touch her and see her while in the hospital brought a morbid and twisted, yet sweet sort of comfort. Until her last breath……when I realized our bodies, no matter what we think of them, are just shells.

Shells on a beach without life inside.

Empty. Used up. Done.

And the concept of eternity hits home. Our lives are just a blink.

Nothing in this world matters except the lives we touch. The people we help. The paths we cross.

And the pain spills from deep within me.

It’s a gut-wrenching, unfixable pain.

There is no way around it. I have to walk smack-dab through it, trusting that on the other side is something besides a balled-up broken woman reduced to a child crying, “I want my mommy.”

The grief is more like a wail only explained and expressed in God’s written Word.

The wailing wall.

I’m there.

Hope.

It’s there too. Somewhere. Calling. Waiting. Soothing like a mother’s touch.

I ponder God’s choice to willingly give us Christ.

I wonder how Christ willingly agreed.

The pain and the ache fill every corner of my body. It’s felt in my bones, muscles and heart.

It’s expressed in solitude when only God watches.

It can not be controlled. It will not be brushed away.

For this path, I’ve been asked to walk it. Knowing He only gives us what we can handle.

He must think a lot of me.

And the cry is, “God, my God…..why? I wasn’t ready. I needed more time.”

The flood pouring from my soul inexplicable. All of it boiling down to TRUST:

Day 15 on Facebook:

Grief is indeed a strange animal. It’s back. It’s like my cat’s tail. Sometimes it’s calm and other times it whips violently. In these times gratefulness is something I cling to with my fingernails. My memories of mom are sweet but they have a bite at the moment. I miss her so much.

Tenderness – mom was tender. She was loving. Her touch was tender and filled with love. I’m learning that nothing can replace that touch. I am a better person because of it. I also know that I would have never been ready to lose my mom. Never.

And I have to trust Gods perfect timing and pray for the work he is doing because of her death. I trust.

So I cry out to God and He comforts and loves me. And the sun shines in the next hour.

For He is good.

My Main Squeeze

It’s been a long time since I’ve sat and talked about my walk with the Lord over the past two years.

Since moving to Florida we’ve been on an amazing journey. My darkest times were during our first year here. We were renting a house, homeschooling in a far smaller space than we had done before and living in a gated community for the first time. Yikes. We’d moved from rural SC where peeing in the back yard was a sport in and of itself. Now, we received nasty grams about the very way I’d potty trained three boys. I cried. I longed for our former home. The kids missed their friends. I missed my friends. I wanted our yard, our woods, our life for the last 10 years.

I longed for the lifechanging Bible Study I attended. I think I took one year off in my 6 years of having 4 children. Those women there were my lifeline. I grew, I cried, I loved and I was loved. Some of my best friends are still in my life because of our vulnerability shared during Bible Study.

There were nights of sitting on the porch crying with a friend from home because I’d had a child diagnosed with ADHD but had no answers, one wasn’t reading and I didn’t know how to help and one was dying to get out of the house and go to school. My life was falling apart. I felt like a failure as a mom.

The first year was dark, yet I knew Florida was where God wanted us. Why? He was certainly the only one who knew!!

As the first year morphed into the second light began to shine. We discovered LearningRx through a friend in our homeschool group. It was there I began to find answers to help my kids. The folks there were kind and seemed truly interested in my children. They offered hope.

Fast forward to today as I sit reading The Purpose Directed Business by Ken Gibson.

For those of you who’ve read The Purpose Driven Life you know what an impact that book can have on your life.

“It’s now about you.”

And it isn’t. Those words offer so much freedom. Freedom to be messed up, sad, happy, uncontrolled, hopeless, hopeful and most of all totally dependent.

Today, I sit and read feeling excited. I’m excited that the man who founded the company God has used in my life is a Christian. I’m excited to be a partnering parent with LearningRx. I’m excited that none of this is really about me or about cognitive thinking skills (although high on my list), it’s about God. It’s about what He wants to do through me, in me and for me.

He’s my Main Squeeze. And I say that with the upmost respect.

To the one who knows me like no other…..“Thank you dad! Thank you for stirring in me a desire that comes through you to reach other moms and children for your glory! Open the eyes of my heart to see and love those you put in my path. Expand my territory. Be huge. Be God!!”