https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L822ergUxPg&feature=youtu.be

Last week was the week after Easter. I’m sure it felt rushed or short or tiring or exhausting or whatever post-Holiday weeks feel to the “normal” people who aren’t grieving.  But my daughter died last year on the Monday after Easter.  So that was Day 1 of the first 365 days in a foreign land- – a new territory given to me one tearful victory at a time. 

 It means that from now on, we’ve “been here before.”  We made it through all the firsts- – all the things we thought would kill us did not.  All the events and days we prayed that we would survive, we actually did.  We had our prayers answered, our needs met. . . The new mercies met us after each sleepless night.  The panic attacks,triggers, and big, hard lumps have all been swallowed.  

It felt amazing to have God deliver me there without the clinical depression this world promised.  But it also felt like finishing a marathon with legs of jelly and heart out of beats and having someone tell you that this finish line you begged for is actually just the start of a much longer race.  

So I’ve felt very deflated. Like I’m walking through mud and everyone else is on air.  It feels like it’s been forever and we have forever to go.  But God called this week- actually He texted me.  Actually He had one of His daughters text me. 

Could I change up my schedule to talk to a group of grieving mothers and women who may be asked to grieve the dream of ever being a mother? And could I do that next week- – the week after Easter. . . 

The week that I would struggle with the muscle memory of shattering. So on His cue, I gathered the broken pieces that He’s put together for me and I set out to try to bring some Truth and Hope to some of my sisters down the road aways. 

Only I was actually the one who needed to think about the truth. To write it down,  further anchoring it in my soul. . . To think about how to package it so that people received it sweetly and properly. To pray for its power, my strength, His message. . . The parts of my story that He could make into a ladder for someone else to get out of the pit. 

Testifying of His greatness and speaking His Truth – – you cannot do it without finding yourself bolstered and renewed in The Good Life He Gives.  It’s  like trying to hug someone you love without feeling any love yourself. 

So I wondered when I left that Parlor Room if I “did it right” . . . Did my story help anybody else’s see theirs  in the light of His love and grace?  And I realized that while I hoped for that, it did not matter. What mattered is that I agreed with God on the hardest matters to walk in harmony with Him on. What matters is that I will not be moved in what I believe about Him. Everything I see,  hear, feel and experience around me can serve as compelling evidence that He isn’t good and I will insist with all that I am that. . . 

As for God, His ways are perfect. His law is flawless. I am shielded as I trust in Him.                 ( Psalm 18:30)

Even if they are ways I would never choose, laws I would never write, and shields that are totally unnatural to rest behind.  Even then. . . 

So I went to minister to a group called Glory Babies and I was the one ministered to the most. What perfect timing and deliverance.  What crazy blessed kingdom economy that the one who prepares is the one who feasts, the one who gives – gets, the one who travels finds herself home again, and the one who longs for her daughter actually feels her purity and presence in the power of ministry. Only God.