My life | Easter 2014

This is a personal post – if you’re looking for beautiful photography, go ahead on to the next one.  But if you want to catch a snippet of my life, I welcome you to read on!

Easter weekend 2014. I walked in the doors, and tears immediately filled my eyes. I was glad we were early so I could have a few moments alone before seeing everyone. I walked through the rooms, touched the chairs, and relived the beautiful memories of the past two years. Hard memories. But beautiful nonetheless.

God was there. He knit the hearts of several women together as we weathered simultaneous deployments of our military husbands. He put desires in our hearts and saw fit to fulfill them. Our group grew, not only in size, but in passion, maturity, and Christian love. This building just fell in our lap after a random appointment with Kenny’s new pediatrician. Families came. God was glorified. He provided amazingly.

And now? It was all exploding at our very fingertips. The brokenness in our hearts seemed to be reigning. People were hurt. There were some who wouldn’t even show their faces here today because of it. What had gone wrong? How could we have prevented it? Did we imagine that God was here all this time, only to find out that it was just a random series of circumstances? Did He just suddenly ditch us to “teach us a lesson we needed to learn”? What about the families that were encouraged, helped, grown through the ministry and fellowship of Sneads Ferry Fellowship Church? Now they were hurt. Angry. Even… deserted?

Was it our fault? What could I have done differently? What could my family have done different? WHERE WAS GOD IN ALL THIS??

Silent. Hard. Cold. Distant. That’s all I could feel, all I could see of God right then, and it was breaking my heart. I felt the coldness and despair creep in, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Prayers were empty and full of angry questions. What was God going to take next? Was He going to leave us completely destitute here? Were all our friends going to be torn from us? What about the little boy who held my heart? Would God take him, too? (He was suffering from some concerning dizzy spells at the time, and that fear was VERY real.) Would our marriage shatter under the strain?

Confusion and apathy reigned. And discord reared its ugly head as followers of Christ could no longer mitigate their differences. We went our separate ways.

Us? We stumbled along. No direction. Only trying to put one foot in front of the other. Where would money come from?   Would we even be able to return to the coastal North Carolina we loved? How would God provide? Did God even care??

Over the next few months, healing balm was patiently applied by our friends at our new church in Greenville, SC. Prayer and tears and listening ears and encouraging words. And hugs. And words straight from the Holy Spirit. There was no other explanation for those words of encouragement that went straight to my soul and brought tears. And glimmers of hope.

My little boy kept me going all these hard months. Every day, he would wake with a smile on his face, ready to find an adventure in each moment. I wanted to teach him about the joys of life in this fallen world, but it became difficult for me to even see them. I felt fake telling him about this God whose love I was seriously doubting. And so we talked about other things. And my heart broke a little more.

And then one day, as my heart burst with love for my baby boy, God reached down and shined a light in my soul. “See this love you have for your baby? Where did it come from?” It couldn’t have come from evil. Evil was everywhere in this world around me, but this Mommy love couldn’t have come from there. No. Not possible. So where?

“IT CAME FROM ME.”

From You, God? But You… You deserted us! You left us alone when we most needed You. You were silent in all our tears. I don’t like your love.

And then, the Word: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11 ESV)

And in that moment, I believed.

Somehow, in this tangled mess of things, God’s love was still shining. Bigger and greater and more incredibly amazing than the Mommy love that bursts my heart with its intensity.

Life hasn’t gotten much easier since then. Brokenness still fills our hearts. Life still hurts. We stumble along, sometimes with tears, sometimes with anger, sometimes with great sorrow. My questions still go unanswered. But in all of it, I have faith that this is not the end!

There is more to this story. There has to be. God is bigger and greater and more loving than I can even imagine.

God, write a beautiful ending to this story.