let’s hold each other’s hands up

“So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill.  As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning.  When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset.  So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.” (Exodus 17:10-13)

who is God?

Describing Who God Is...
These are just some rough notes and thoughts from a research paper I am currently working on that I wanted to preserve.

God is a loving shared relationship, complete with the vulnerability that giving unconditional love requires and also the holiness which pure love demands. ‘Relationship’ may seem an odd description to choose in attempting to define God but I think it truly is how God wants me to view and understand him. It is through the interaction, the obedience, and the vulnerability that the Trinity shares within itself that God reveals his character and demonstrates a trustworthiness that reaches out to me. And it is through God’s fierce and persistent protection of this relationship that I see and learn what true love and life abundant are all about.

To learn who God is, I begin by looking at the triune relationship of the Father to the Son to the Holy Spirit. Throughout Jesus’ earthly ministry, a deeply personal relationship with the Father is revealed. This relationship involves a willingness from both sides. Jesus’ obedience to the Father’s will even in the most difficult of situations demonstrates not just a sense of duty to the Father, but a loving and joyful obedience.  It is a love in action. And we also see the Holy Spirit consistently interacting with Jesus, as ultimately it is "through the Holy Spirit" that Jesus ascends into heaven to be with the Father (Acts 1:2).  Throughout the gospels we see how "interconnected the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Christians, love and obedience are. The very fabric of who we are is an intricate tapestry of relationships and actions" (1).

God is a relationship shared in love. He is not, however, just demonstrating an example of what a loving relationship can look like, he is actually offering participation in that relationship to me. My heart is daily being prepared as a home for the Holy Spirit to reside within. God is inviting me deeper into the personal relationship Jesus has with the Father, as I allow myself to become obedient to the Spirit’s urgings. Author Donald Fairbairn tells us that "if we were to simply love because he loved us, then that would mean that we love on our own, merely by imitating Christ. But we now know that the Holy Spirit lives within us – helping us, enabling us, leading us to love others" (1).  I love not because I know how to, but because God shares his relationship of love with me.

As I look closely at what the Trinitarian relationship is inviting me into, I cannot help but see a God who is reliable, who inspires confidence and courage, and who is a protecting Abba Father. Author James Bryan Smith sums up the attributes of God into six adjectives: present, pure, powerful, provides, pardons, and protects. If God is these things, then a relationship with God is completely good. "In all of his stories, Jesus describes a God who seems altogether good and is always out for our good, even if we cannot understand it" (3).

I may not fully comprehend how our triune God can lavish love so extravagantly, but I can trust that God does and that the offer is extended to me. "God’s desire for us is that we should live in him… That shows what, in his heart of hearts, God is really like – indeed, what reality is really like. In its deepest nature and meaning our universe is a community of boundless and totally competent love" (4).   The invitation into this community involves both a willingness from God as leader and myself as follower but the interactions of the Trinity perfectly model this willingness within its own members. This is illustrated in examples such as when Jesus freely states, "not my will but yours be done" to the Father (Luke 22:42).

And as with any invitation, there also exists a vulnerability as to what the response will be in return. God, who used his power to create our beautiful universe, does not shy away from entering this fragile state. He chose to enter the manger and the cross, perhaps to demonstrate vulnerability as a strength and place self-sacrifice as the highest act of all. "I think we have trouble with God feeling joy and pain because we think they are beneath God," but to dare to give love with the risk of it not being returned takes strength (3).  God wants love and "thus he seeks for those who could safely and rightly worship him." (5) But there still exists the possibility of unrequited love, even for God. I think Smith sums up God’s motivation for sharing his love best when he states "here is a key principle of the kingdom of God: What we let go of will never be lost but becomes a thing of beauty" (3).

God willingly demonstrates a vulnerable state within the interactions of the Trinity and he does so in order to relate to us, but nothing is lost or ambiguous in that situation. God is always consistent and his will is rational.  God is holy in all his decisions. "Biblical revelation suggests that the single most important word to describe God is holy" (2).   So just as important as it is for me to understand God’s open obedience and loving tenderness, God also seeks to comfort us with his holy power. God is mindfully objective in his opposition to evil. "God is fiercely and forcefully opposed to the things that destroy his precious people" (3).

God has already taken the steps to defeat my enemy. "God destroyed sin by making the supreme sacrifice himself, taking all of the guilt and pain and suffering of my sin upon himself" (3).   He is powerfully aware of my situation precisely because he has been vulnerable enough to enter into my life. I can trust an intimate relationship with God because his nature is to both will good for me and oppose sin simultaneously. ?At the heart of the Holy Mystery there is an immense and outrageous love that gives us life, accepts us as we are, draws us forward into wholeness and will never let us go. The fire of God’s holiness is the fire of blazing love" (2).  God is both "kind and severe" – and we want him to be that way (3).

Dallas Willard spoke about the power of relationship and how our relationships, when filled with love, truth, and power, can magnify God (5). What a thought - that how I relate to others can amplify God himself. Through observing the relationship within the Trinity, the experience of my own relationship with God, and through my interactions with others around me, I not only learn who God is but I also get to be transformed by participation in God’s beautiful reign of relationship here on earth. 
Sources:
1) Fairbairn, Donald. Life in the Trinity; An Introduction to Theology with the Help of the Church Fathers. Downers Grove: InnerVarsity Press, 2009.
2) Hudson, Trevor. Discovering Our Spiritual Identity: Practices for God’s Beloved. Downers Grove: InnerVarsity Press, 2010.
3) Smith, James Bryan. The Good and Beautiful God: Falling in Love with the God Jesus Knows. Downers Grove: InnerVarsity Press, 2009.
4)Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering our Hidden Life in God. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1997.
5) Willard, Dallas. "The Kingdom of God." Teaching series for Hollywood Presbyterian Church, Hollywood, March – April, 1990.
6) The Life with God Bible. New Revised Standard Version, Harper Collins, 1989.

 

grief

Grief by Gwen Flowers 

I had my own notion of grief.
I thought it was the sad time
That followed the death of someone you love.
And you had to push through it
To get to the other side.
But I'm learning there is no other side.
There is no pushing through.
But rather,
There is absorption.
Adjustment.
Acceptance.
And grief is not something you complete,
But rather, you endure.
Grief is not a task to finish
And move on,
But an element of yourself-
An alteration of your being.
A new way of seeing.
A new definition of self.

from a sunshiney friend 🌻 

thankfullness

Today I am thankful.  I am choosing to be thankful because I do not always feel thankful.  Just as I can choose joy when I do not always feel it, I can choose gratitude as well.  Give thanks in all things (1 Thes. 5:18).  January has been a month of emotional twists and turns for me.  I sometimes step back to look at my life and wonder how in the world I am living this life?  I was quite content with the “boring” and routine life of just being a wife and mother for so many years.  I know I often complained and I know was not always thankful for my life, but I was largely content with the blessings of family God had given me and I had a happy future mapped out.  But apparently a whole bunch of twists and turns and lessons were in store for my future instead.  And I have said it before but it is true, with the greatest sorrows also comes the greatest joys.  I am not sure the second can even truly happen without the first.  We have to feel deeply both ends of the spectrum to really feel at all.  Christ did.  And He is our example to follow.  We were not created to simply live boring and routine lives, although we can certainly have seasons of that.  But we were created to participate in big and amazing things.  We were created to participate with God in his work, and his work is almost never boring and most assuredly always amazing.

I had high hopes that 2018 would be an amazing year of happiness for me and when the first week of the year was filled with sorrow and loss, I questioned.  But God persistently reminds me over and over that his plans are always for my good, for a hope and for a future.  And so I remain trusting and thankful.  A friend spoke these words to me, straight from prayer last week, “If she had continued... the grief before her would have been greater than the grief behind her. This was not the not the time... In days ahead, I will lead her... For all of this was a false start and a false beginning. In the future she will see and know what I, her God, am doing."  These words were so shockingly affirming to my heart because they show that God always knows my heart, knows my needs, knows my wants, and he goes before me to pave my way.  I don’t know why I have had this false start but I know God is using it for my good and because I know that God was a part of all my past grief, I know he is protecting me and guiding me in my future.  The sorrows of this moment are indeed momentary and passing, teaching me trust and patience.  And they are protecting me from myself.  How many times over will God keep patiently teaching me to let go of what I want and trust him?  He will lead me, he will protect me, and he will provide for me. 

And then this week God flooded me with willing others who spoke this love repeatedly to my soul.  And I badly needed it.  I am so thankful for each of you who have encouraged me and prayed for me and just have been willing to let God speak truth through your words or comfort.  Every time I fall into that pit of despair and grief, which had not happened for a long while, God reminds me that he sees me and he knows and he walks with me through it.  He does not just pluck me out at my first cry of distress, he gently sits with me in my despair and whispers his truth to me.  I do not like it that way, I just want to be saved, I want happiness and joy to be the themes of my days.  But he lets me sit in sorrow because the slow working through of that pain brings about a greater joy than a swift rescue would.  And so I remain thankful.  2018 will indeed be a great and joyful year because I choose for it to be that way.  I am reminded to stay obedient and open and willing to participate in God’s work and not “settle” for anything less than his way and his plan.

 

sunset from my yard

fog rolling in at sunset

this beautiful life

A friend shared this song with me today.  The words and the timing touched my heart so deeply.
Link to: This Beautiful Life

What in the world are we doing here?
What is the meaning of it all?
To fall in love, to make a life that’s calm and stable
Or just to find a place where I belong?

What in the world am I looking for?

What is the peace that I can find?

This longing for, I can’t ignore but am I able

To see the good and taste it on my tongue?

All that I know

All that I see

All that I feel

Inside of me

All that I’ve done

All that I’ve tried

There must be more

To this beautiful life

Well I go to water to find innocence

Breathe deep the air to fill my lungs

And beauty sings his songs to me

Every note I follow to find out where

The voice is coming from

All that I know

All that I see

All that I feel

Inside of me

All that I’ve done

All that I’ve tried

There must be more

To this beautiful life

And I can’t be satisfied

This well has long been dry

What does it cost to find a home

For what’s been lost?

Well maybe I’m a part of something that’s bigger than me

Like I’m a page in a book in a library

And inside my heart there’s a dying part that’s always searching

‘Cause I know that there’s a place where I belong

All that I know

All that I see

All that I feel

Inside of me

All that I’ve done

All that I’ve tried

There must be more

To this wonderful

Terrible

Beautiful life

in the valley

Widowhood sucks.  It’s like a state of sorrow you can never ever escape from and when you think you’ve found joy, grief knocks you back down harder than before.  Some of you know I started dating someone back in June.  We parted ways for awhile in th fall and it was a very slow road for me to trust and give my heart away.  I worked so very hard the year prior to get myself to a good place before having anything to be able to give another.  Somehow I did find the courage to not just give love again, but begin to hope for the first time since Ryan’s death and to plan a future.  I was brave enough to finally share that excitement with a lot of you in December.  Then this morning, completely unexpectedly, he ended the relationship.  It has sent me reeling in shockwaves.  I won’t share details but if this could happen, I absolutely know in my mind that it’s the right thing for us to go separate ways.  But my heart is going to be so much slower to catch up.  I feel emotionally knocked back to the midst of my grief and loss from two summers ago all over again.  No one prepared me for what kind of emotions could resurface in a breakup.  And even though I know it is for the best, I still can barely breathe.  My body does not want to sleep or eat, choosing to stay in that panic mode I had hoped would never overtake me again.  It feels like Ryan dying all over again as I have to let go of the plans and future I thought I had.  I am left wondering why?  Why, God, would I go through more loss?  Why would I have to repeat the steps of grief that I had worked so hard to journey through?  Why would this pain be so disproportionately large, compared to the short length of our relationship?  It does not even make sense.  There must be some plan and some reason God allowed this.  And I have to trust it is a good plan.  I do trust it is a good plan.  I trust there is a lesson and a healing in this.  I just can’t see it yet... Right now all I see is the loneliness setting in again in a deep and painful way.  Please pray for my bruised and battered heart this weekend, that God comfort it, as only He can.  Please be patient with me as I retreat from the world for a bit to grieve and heal.  If you reach out, please know how much I love you.  And if don’t get back to you, please don’t take it personally, sometimes just taking the next breathe is exhausting enough.  I pray for God’s presence to be a lasting joy that floods into the children and I’s life again, abundantly.  And above all else, please, God, do not let this pain cause a root of bitterness to grow inside me, but instead use my broken heart for good and to love again bravely, if it be your will.

grief, you suck

Grief, you suck.  You come out of seemingly nowhere and hijack my mood, my hour, my day, my life.

I know that grief is accepting the reality of what is.  Grief’s job is to aid a person in coming to terms with the way things really are, so that they can move forward.  Grief is a gift from God because it has that purpose.  Without it, we would all be condemned to a life of continually denying reality, arguing or protesting against reality, and never growing from the realities we experience.  Grief is the price paid for love.  My head knows this.  My heart, however, is resisting and moaning and groaning and throwing a toddler-sized tantrum about it right now.

My reality is that Ryan is gone and lately I have wanted to retreat back into the early stages of grief, the ones where I was in denial of his absence and I could imagine my joy at having him walk in the door at any moment.  I want it so badly that it becomes almost difficult to function in my current reality, the sucky reality where Ryan never walks in through a door again.  These thoughts have been overwhelming me lately and honestly make it difficult to function fully in my current situation or to connect with those I love around me.  And in order to snap out of the daydream I fall into, I have to force myself back to my current reality and then I am finding myself angry.  I am angry with the state of my current reality.  I am angry that depression robbed me of my husband and “broke” my family.  I am angry that I have to navigate this stupid single parenting thing day after day.  I am angry that I feel alone.  I am angry that I feel angry because I do not even like anger.  My default emotion is almost never anger at anything or anyone - annoyance maybe or disappointment, but I can probably count the number of times I have been truly angry in my life on one hand.  But here is grief bringing me through unexpected and unwanted anger.  And then not wanting to sit in that kind of destructive emotion, I switch to sadness.  And that is when the tears flow.  Maybe it is a pity party I need to have before I can pick my head back up and try again.

But this seems to be the cycle of grief I am currently in.  One of allowing myself to revert temporarily back to denial, followed by anger, and then just a deep sadness.  It must be that I need to relearn some of those grief lessons or get unstuck again, I do not know for sure.  But it is exhausting and it feels like a step backward, which is discouraging. 

Currently my grief seems to be “stuck” around food.  Ryan loved to cook and he was amazing at it.  He rarely had time to cook but on weekends he would often put together some amazing and complex dish like chicken parmesan or a chicken kiev.  He also made the most amazing carrot cake, chocolate mousse, or creme brûlée, always from scratch and always leaving behind a messy kitchen that I really did not mind cleaning up after, even though I sometimes wondered if he purposefully tried to use every kitchen utensil possible in his cooking and baking!  But to be fair, he often offered to help clean afterwards and I almost always said I did not mind the clean up at all if he did the cooking!  I have always seen cooking as a chore that just has to be done, but Ryan saw being in the kitchen as a joy and stress relief, and he liked that something yummy came out of it.  And on weekdays I would start dinner, knowing that if Ryan was home from work early enough, he would gladly help finish the cooking or add a little something to what I started to improve it.  It was a huge blessing to me.

Ryan was a picky eater, and so are both my kids, so it was always a comfort to know that I was not alone cooking for three others who might dislike what I put together.  Instead, we had a pretty regular rotation of family favorites, almost completely picked by Ryan, and we just stuck to those recipes, occasionally adding a new one, retiring one we overused, and often being adjusted by Ryan to make it better.  We even have a family cookbook binder Ryan and I put together years ago which contains those recipes typed out and the changes he made over the years.  It had a picture of Alton Brown’s “Good Eats” logo on the front because Ryan loved that cooking show - it was a great show that mixed cooking with science and humor.  Yes, we were food nerds. 

After his death, I had a really hard time cooking again because all of our family recipes were really Ryan’s recipes.  I could not step in the kitchen and make anything without remembering how Ryan made it.  At some point, however, I realized my picky eater children were missing their favorite “comfort” foods so I tried to make a few familiar dishes.  The first time I made our family sweet and sour chicken, I cried over it.  It is a recipe Ryan tweaked so many times until it became what it is now.  I only attempted it one other time sometime last year and then gave up on that one.  It is too emotionally exhausting for me to go through the steps to make it and even more exhausting trying to eat it.  So for the last year and a half, the kids and I have eaten a few of the simplest dishes I can stand to recreate, namely their mac & cheese and enchiladas, along with a few new items I have come up with, usually against Kate and Charlie’s will.  This is intermixed with more take-out than I care to admit to and those all too often evening dinners of sandwiches, a frozen meal heated up, or sometimes simply a bowl of cereal... Sometimes I just make food for the kids while I blend myself a smoothie and call it a night.  

Even lunches are difficult because all too often over the years Ryan would come home during his lunch break to eat with us, or lunch consist of leftovers from whatever delicious meal we had together from dinner.  And dang it, even breakfast has a food memory.  Ryan’s scrambled eggs were amazing.  If he was home at breakfast, I would often get the eggs out and ask him to scramble them for me.  It was an ongoing joke because try as I would, my eggs just never came out like his!  The kids would agree.  But now they are stuck with mom’s second rate eggs and even though they eat them without complaining, I have to know that they think of daddy’s eggs when having to eat mine.  Sigh.  And when you are a stay at home mom and you homeschool, you do not get a break from planning any meal.  Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are all family meals and so the food reminder hits me several times a day. 

What I would not give to just have meals show up!!  To not have to think about the planning, grocery list, prepping, and cooking!  It has been so emotionally exhausting to me and there is not a day that goes by that I can just skip thinking about food because, apparently, it is something our bodies need daily...  Did I mention that Ryan and I would usually grocery shop together on weekend mornings, without kids?  It was like a mini unromantic date and I loved it.  It is amazing to me how feeding myself and my kids has been such a huge source of stress to me all these months.  It seems so silly and trivial, but it has hands down been the biggest stress to me and cooking is still obviously the one grief trigger that hits me the most often.  It is probably because I have not really dealt with it.  I have not come up with a new “family routine” for meals, it has just been something scrapped together with no real plan or consistency.  So that is my goal right now, to somehow face this stupid food hurdle.

It really was brought to my attention when I was sick a few weeks ago and Charlie took it upon himself to make me breakfast one morning.  He surprised me with a plate of freshly made pancakes and a glass of orange juice brought to me in bed!  It was the sweetest thing and exactly what Ryan would have done if he was here.  I have no doubt Charlie watched his daddy take care of me and he tries to step into that role in any way he can.  It is both sweet and completely heartbreaking.  But after praising him for the pancakes - which were cooked perfectly - he has started asking to do be able to cook other things.  Right now he’s experimenting with different pancake and waffle recipes.  His best has been a strawberry waffle he made with strawberry purée mixed in.  He is so much Ryan’s son.  But enlisting Charlie’s help, I picked out some new recipes to try to learn together and twice a week agreed Charlie to be the chef, as we cook something new together.  My hope is that this will both help him get past being so picky and also hopefully jump start me out of this stupid food grief funk that I have been in for far, far too long.

the hilarious Alton Brown from “Good Eats”

view from hills of Santa Barbara at sunset 

Monday morning

this face 🐶 😍 my Ollie puppykins

new year belovedness charter

Something we were required to do for my residency back in October was to write a personal “Beloved Charter.”  This is where you go back through your favorite Scriptures or select verses that spoke to your heart in some way and you rewrite them as God speaking directly to you.  The result is a deeply personal statement of God’s love towards yourself, grounded in the truth of God’s promises.  

The truth is that each of us are God’s own beloved children and writing this individual declaration is a way to let that truth sink deep into our hearts.  Rereading it daily can be a way to reaffirm our own belovedness each day.  Because until we know and can claim our own belovedness, we will have a difficult time loving others as Christ loves.  This exercise, of forming my beloved charter and reading over it, was transforming for me.  It reminds me daily of my identity in God’s eyes in such a beautiful way and the exact verses have even changed or evolved over time as God brings new promises to my awareness.  I wanted to share my current charter below, along with the verse references that I wrote it from at the bottom.  And as we start a new year, I urge you all to write your own charter.  Just look for verses that speak to you, write them down, and see what forms and how it changes.  The result will be a personal love letter just for you because you are God’s beloved child.

My Personal Beloved Charter:

“Jennifer, I am in your midst. I rejoice over you with gladness. I quiet you with my love (1). Why are you anxious? I know all your longings and your sighing is not hidden from me. Consider the lilies (2). With confidence draw near to the throne of grace (3). My grace is sufficient for you (4). I show the immeasurable riches of my grace in kindness toward you in Christ Jesus. It is my gift (5). I did not spare my son, but gave him up for you, how will I not also with him graciously give you all things (6). You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you (7). In my book are written the days that were formed for you. Your soul knows it very well (8).”

References:

1) Zephaniah 3:17

2) Matthew 6:28 & Psalm 38:9

3)Hebrews 4:16

4) 2 Corinthians 12:9

5) Ephesians 2:7-8 

6) Romans 8:32

7) 1 Samual 26:24, John 16:27, Jeremiah 30:19

8) Psalm 139:16 & 14

Christmas - pain, joy, and hope

It is Christmas Eve today and I am struggling.  It has been exactly a year and a half, 18 full months to the day, since Ryan died.  As I wrap the gifts tonight from “Santa” for my children, I can not help but think of all the Christmas eves Ryan and I spent together after the kids were in bed, eating the cookies left out for Santa, filling the stockings, or wrapping last minute gifts.  I even think about that one year we both had the stomach flu and stayed up late building a play kitchen set for little Kate to have the next morning.  She was only a year and a half old and we seriously debated just telling her Christmas was the following week because we were so very sick!  But instead we pulled out the directions and took turns building pieces of that little pink play kitchen in between blowing noses and trips to the bathroom to throw up.  It was miserable and it became a joke for years afterward about how sick we were.  But somehow it was still a joyful memory because we were together and laughing about it.

This year I struggle because I miss Ryan and I am just plain mad he is not here with me.  I am upset I have to fill the stockings by myself and eat those stupid Santa cookies alone.  I am sad that the one person who could know or understand all those years of Christmas Eve memories is gone.  And as I do these things I realize this is the first Christmas I have spent alone.  Ever.  I mean the kids are here with me, but after they go to bed, I am alone.  Ryan was either with me every Christmas, or the couple years he deployed over the holiday, I stayed at my parents house or was able to visit Ryan at his location.  Ryan deployed quite a few times in our 15 years of marriage, but it was a huge blessing that it was almost never over Christmas - and almost always over Valentines!  (Another joke we had was to ask every Valentine’s Day where he would be because it was almost certainly never home.  Luckily it was not a holiday that “mattered” to us.). And last Christmas I stayed at my sister’s house because I was too fearful of being alone.  This year, however, I am in my own home though.  I saw friends at church earlier today and I will have family at my door for Christmas Day, but this evening, Christmas Eve, is my first by myself.  But I also have to say, I think this is good for me.  I think knowing I can “do Christmas” (or anything else) on my own is good for me.  It is good for my self confidence and it also builds compassion in my heart for those who struggle, are lonely, and grieve.  Sitting alone, letting the many tears flow freely, remembering and feeling, it is all good for me to go through.  We all need time to let the emotions flow freely, acknowledge the hurt, and let these painful things transform us, keeping our hearts tender and open to love, instead of hardening up in anger, fear, or self protection.  A feeling heart is a loving heart.  It is how God sees and cares for us and it is the only way to love.

UPDATE 1/15/18:  I took this post down after David and I broke up.  It just hurt too much to read these words I wrote below.  But I decided to put them back up because they were truly my thoughts and feelings at the time that I wrote them.  I had no idea that just a few weeks after writing them I would have a broken heart.  And that broken heart would trigger the grief my soul and emotions remember.  If you read my January 2018 post “in the valley” you can see how this post connects to that one.

Always one day at a time, one breathe at a time. 

The other thing is I have this Christmas too is a wonderful person I adore, who is joyful and wise and so caring.  His greatest gift to me has been allowing me to still love Ryan.  He has so patiently listened when I have needed to still tearfully grieve these past months.  He has put up with my pain, my emotions, and my fear (and even me stepping away from our relationship and before coming back to it last September).  He has been beyond compassionate to me, willing to be present with my children, and amazingly loving even when my actions have so often been less than lovable. 

So this year, as I sit in this quiet home, alone, I am not without love and hope.  I know God has faithfully walked with me through every step of the last 18 months, both the pain and the joy.  I am not ever truly alone.  I have my extended family nearby and am beyond thankful for all my sister has put aside to be there for me.  I have my precious Ryan in heaven, who I know loves me and I believe is watching over me.  I am blessed with hopeful plans and a new excitement for my much prayed-over future.  I have two amazing children, who also know that life is a balance of feeling the horrific pains of tragedy alongside the depths of true joy.  And I have a Savior who was born in a quiet little manger, very much alone with his tiny earthly family.  A Savior who knows loneliness, who knows grief, who knows joy, and who is the hope we can count on in and through everything, tonight, this Christmas Eve, and every day.  This Christmas my prayer is that we each know and feel the truth that we are God’s ceaseless spiritual beings, created for an eternal destiny, beloved by our Savior, and cared for by His limitless love.

That little kitchen set we built for Kate, 2004