Pressing on

When everything is going into a spin cycle of chaos around you and you still have peace, you know that growth has happened for you. I can honestly say that everyday I wake up and have breathe is a reward in itself!

Nine years ago it was such a struggle for me to even get motivated to get out of bed in the morning. I had just had several family members pass and it felt like I couldn’t even breathe it was like the biggest weight hanging around my neck and nothing I could do would alleviate it. I had completely given up all hope and pressed into the one source I knew would be there for me.

I had grown tired of being in a place were nothing was moving forward and I felt so stuck! I remember laying there looking at the dark gray walls of my room and screamed why! In my mind I thought I would have this big ahah moment and everything would just fall into place, what I felt instead was a soft and gentle pat on the head. I had neglected my relationship with God the last year before I had this moment of reflection and reconciliation with him. I was so over the never ending cycle of loss I had found myself in.

First loss was my best friend and little sister, then a a week later lost my big cousin who was like a big brother to me, two weeks later my aunt passed from heart problems as well, so that created a whole layer of anguish and fear in me. Worrying if I would be around for my son and leaving him without a solid structure of parental support.

It was like my air was being deflated from my lungs, on top of this my bonus dad was battling with stage four lung cancer that had metastasized and was spreading in his body so I knew our time was short with him, this was the beginning of what would be one of the most challenging seasons of my life.

It was hard to believe I had lost people so close and precious to me that when two months later when we rushed my dad to the hospital because they found another brain liaison, that I began to feel cold inside and my relationship with God began to grow colder. I knew he was with us but it was hard to see the glory and fullness of his promises when you had nothing but death surrounding you on every side!

Then the day I was dreading came around, it was so hard to leave that morning because I had a feeling it was going to be the last day I would see him. I went in and talked to him and held his hand like I did each morning that I could, sitting in the room and telling him I love him with a kiss on the cheek is the last moments I remember before I jumped into the car and drove to work.

I remember just coasting in to the job and just clocking in when the phone call came. “He’s gone” was all I remembered hearing before I collapsed right there in the middle of the floor.

You can know something is coming but still be so unprepared for it, yet I don’t want you to be unprepared for what is to come. You see going back to that morning I was in my bed barely able to move and get up God reminded me that he would never leave me nor forsake me!

It was still a hard thing to grasp because I had just gotten the phone call that my dad had been admitted to the hospital with stage four colon cancer! Yeah I was just feeling done with life at that moment, because, even though our relationship had its ups and downs I couldn’t fathom loosing them both. My heart felt so shattered, how could this be happening to me again.

It took that moment with that soft and gentle pat on my head, for me to remember what God had promised me a year and a half before, “I will never leave you or forsake you!” Life didn’t feel fair or even real to me at that time but I knew he was with me.

How else could I get up and move and find my brother and hold onto his hand and mourn the life we never got to have nor would have again! It took us moving past this for the sake of our children that we got the chance to step up and love our father in a way that was different then anything we could have ever thought possible; that when he died a year later I was able to cry and still take steps into the right direction and not get stuck in the muck and clay again!

Grief can be a hard thing to process or even move in when you have a hope and a future, I cannot imagine having to go into the last nine years without the hope I have in Jesus. I cannot understand the compassion and love it took for God to send his only son to died for us so that we can be redeemed to him!

Losing family that meant the world to me was so hard and tested me to my limits, but to purposely send your only one to the earth to die for a reckless and ungrateful people who would rather die and be separated for eternity than to turn to him baffles me!

This my friend is what I was talking about when I said knowing what’s coming and not doing something about it! God gave us a gift that is so precious, to make sure that we can be with him forever, to keep us from being in eternal damnation and permanent separation forever. JESUS- Yeshua- The Word-Messiah and Lord of lords. Many names yet one of many functions to correct and bring us back to right standing with Him!