The cloud

I feel like I am in a battle. Even though it is hard and exhausting, i am encouraged because I know who wins. God always wins. There really is no other alternative when we go through life and pain and grief. As believers, well anyone really, we have only two things we can do in respect to God; we can move toward Him or we can move away from Him. If we move toward Him, or even just look His way, we have hope. If we choose the other way, away from God, there is nothing. No peace, no hope for anything. Just struggling on our own, with no hope for this life, or eternity. Our hope lies in Jesus, and looking to Him for anything and everything. This has been a hard week or so, for me. I can't totally put into words where i am at but this is sort of what I feel. Streams in the Desert on March 14 said,

"Do not be afraid to enter the cloud descending on your life, for God is in it.

And the other side is radiant with His glory. "Do not be surprised at the painful trial

you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you.

But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ." (1 Peter 4:12-13)

When you feel the most forsaken and lonely, God is near.

He is in the darkest cloud. Forge ahead into the darkness without flinching,

knowing that under the shelter of the cloud, God is waiting for you.

This has spoken to me this week, because I feel a heaviness, a sadness, a confusion, a fogginess that I haven't felt for several months. I was doing good, I really was, I felt clarity and peace and joy, and I thought I had gotten through the hardest part of grief. The initial intense pain. Now I don't feel that, i feel in a funk, I cry because I don't know how I feel. I am genuinely excited about our house and have been busy working on that, but as we get ready to move in, in a few weeks, it is also blaringly obvious the there is someone who should be with us, but is not. I feel like I am trying to be ok, to feel good, but trying feels hard. The littlest things that people ask me to do, feel huge and overwhelming, and they shouldn't be. It feels cruel to me, everyone having babies and being pregnant around me and I couldn't have my baby. And yet, i know God is NOT cruel. That is not who He is, not in His character. So needless to say I feel a darkness over me, but what has encouraged me even as I write this, is that God is in this. He is waiting for me, and wants to teach me things about himself through this. Not just getting to the other side and being ok. Its about the journey, not the destination. That is life! God has to be in this, otherwise we would just experience loss and suffering, but for what??? To just live a mediocre life after loss, and not experience life to the full? So what, if we lose something or someone we love, then thats that, and now we live with our suffering and damaged broken self forever?? There has to be more. God is more. He wants to give us himself, and yet so often we don't experience Him until we have lost. I am not open to Him the way I am when I have lost. God has something for each of us in our losses, whatever they are, or else I don't believe we would experience them! Because He is good. Are the things that happen in life good? Nope. But He is. I think of the song. Blessed Be The Name of The Lord. The is a part of the song that says,

He gives and takes away,

He gives and takes away,

My heart will choose to say,

Blessed Be Your Name.

Those are easy words to say, until something has been taken from us. Then we know what it means to CHOOSE to say Blessed Be Your Name. It is a choice. As i have said alot in this post, I feel............and I do feel, but I also choose Jesus. I choose to say Blessed Be Your Name, even though this sucks! Because He is my HOPE. My only hope.

Only a few people even ask me how I am anymore. And I understand. I have been doing good. I think people think that I am just back to normal. But I am not normal, I don't feel normal. It's weird because it is hard to describe how I feel right now. I am reading Jerry Sittser's book, A Grace Disguised. I feel like he puts so much of what I am feeling into words. He talks about our identity's and trying to find who we are after we experience a loss. We are never who we once were, but that doesn't mean that we can't have high expectations for our life after loss. Yes, if we have expectations that include our lost loved one, then we will surely be disappointed. But we can have high expectations for our future that are equally as good, but just different. The scenery of our life is different, but it can still be beautiful, if we change our focus. That is what I feel I am working through now. Accepting that what my dream was for having Esther as my daughter here on earth, is no longer. But even with our loss of Esther, God is still good, and has good in store for us, it will just be different than we expected. I know that with God, when one dream dies, another dream is brought forth, and one which we never imagined. That is who God is, and if I wait expectantly for Him, and Him alone, He will show up. And I know that what He has for us, is what He planned in advance. His great and precious promises...............