A year in the life...

We have a big week coming up.  We will be celebrating the twin’s first heavenly birthday.  With that will come a flood of memories.  I dread it but I also look forward to it.  Its one of those unknowns.  Will I celebrate or will I mourn?  We can celebrate the ways that we have seen God move mountains. We can use each memory as a memorial stone, reminding us how God showed up in our worst moments.  Or this week has the potential to send us deep in despair. 

I attended a conference this weekend at my church but it was on the way there that God showed up in a big way.  It was 6:30am.  It was dark.  It was quiet.  When I got to the church there was no one there.  I even questioned if I was at the right campus.  But it was in that quiet and stillness that God found me.  I was listening to Hillary Scott’s song “Still”.  The portion of the song that stood out to me was “You’re parting waters.  Making a way for me.  You’re moving mountains that I don’t even see.  You’ve answered my prayer before I even speak.  All you need for me to be is still.” 

I found myself singing along with those words and then the significance struck me.  I remembered that when I was deep in my grief this past year, I listened to Lauren Daigle’s CD How Can It Be daily.    She has a song called “Trust in You”.  The lyrics I recalled were “When you don’t move the mountains I’m needing you to move.  When you don’t part the waters I wish I could walk through.  When you don’t give the answers as I cry out to you.  I will trust, I will trust, I will trust in You.”  That was a theme for me in those days.  There was so much that I didn’t understand.  I’ve seen God move mountains in other people’s lives. I’ve seen him save children from the grips of death.  How come he didn’t do that for us? 

The day I went into preterm labor the sermon topic at church was “why do bad things happen to good people?” I couldn’t have planned that better myself.  They showed a video of my friend Kim who lost her husband in a tragic hiking accident.  She wrapped up the whole video by basically saying that if she told her story of loss and pain but finding comfort and love in the arms of God and just one person got closer to a saving relationship with Jesus, then it is all worth it.  I remember those words echoing in my ears as I drove myself to the hospital that night.  I remember telling God that my one goal in life is for my children’s lives to glorify Him.  So if he chose to take them today, I need their story to count for something.  I need their short breaths on this earth to have eternal significance.  Otherwise I can’t survive this. 

I’ve spent a year in His presence- sometimes at peace, sometimes aching in silence.  I’ve documented every portion of our year and this journey of grief.  I’ve made our story known so that His glory would be known.   I’ve heard from mothers who have lost their children and how our story is an encouragement to them.  I’ve had people reach out and tell me that their friends lost a baby and ask for advice as to what to do to help them during this dark time. 

On the one year anniversary of going into labor, the one year anniversary of saying that prayer of significance over my sweet babies, I have the honor of speaking to my MOPS group.  I get to tell our story, God’s story.  I get to share about our darkness, but God’s hope.  I get to share that in the midst of this indescribable pain, I got to see God.  I get to share this crazy dichotomy of light and darkness, of abandonment but never feeling so loved before in my life. 

In my darkness God gave me the words of “Trust in You”.  Even though I don’t understand what or why, I will trust in you.  The beauty of our God is that He works behind the scenes.  While we struggle, he is moving mountains and answering prayers we haven’t even had the words to pray yet.  God showed me the parallel of this year in those two songs.  A year ago I vowed to trust in a God I didn’t understand.  Today I see the fruit of that labor.  I see how God was moving mountains on my behalf while I struggled to keep my head above water.  I see how God opened doors in my writing and being able to share His story of love and deliverance.  Looking back, I don’t just see the pain.  I see God’s fingerprints.  I see how God provided.  I see love. 

I see the way God raised up friends to take care of us.  Like I said, I have never felt so loved in my life.  My friends brought us meals.  They brought me coffee (my love language).  They cleaned and packed my house (we were in the midst of a move while dealing with grief).  They laughed at my inappropriately morbid jokes (your sense of humor changes after dealing with tragedy).  They gave me a glimpse of normal when my normal was tragically transformed.  They let me be “me”, whatever “me” showed up that day- some saw an ugly me.  I would not have survived this without God putting these friends in place to be my safety net.   

All this happened because I was brought to a point of stillness.  In my grief fog, I couldn’t comprehend much.  My brain wouldn’t hold information.  I would sit in a blank stare.  But had I been busy and “moved on”, I wouldn’t have seen all that God did during this time.  I would have missed his fingerprints.  Our culture is all about “go! Go! Go!”.  We are constantly running.  We don’t even know how to sit without filling the void with cell phones or computers. But it is in the stillness, in the quiet, in the fog where God comes down and meets with us. 

In Exodus we follow the story of the Israelites being led by Moses out of captivity.  God was leading them through the desert- a dry place where they would be forced to completely depend on Him.  From the Israelites perspective, that had to be terrifying.  They were leaving the comfort of what they knew.  Yes, they were captives, but it was familiar.  They knew what was expected of them.  God was leading them somewhere new, with new challenges.  Exodus 13:21 says “By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way…”  God led in a cloud.  The significance of that is not lost on me.  I’ve witnessed that cloud and the comfort it brings.

So as we look back on this year, we cherish every part of it: the light and the dark, the clarity and the fog.  We see how God provided and moved mountains.  We are grateful for the lives of Lucas and Lorelei.  We’re thankful for the legacy they left and the effect they have and will have on those around us.  We can allow ourselves to sit in sadness but we will end in praise for “He has been good to us” (Psalm 13:6).