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The Gift of You

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My Sweet Paige Abigail, I can’t believe you’ve already been snug in our Savior’s arms for a whole year already. Time sure does fly. But I thank God daily for the gift of you! Even though I wonder all the time about what your sweet smile would’ve looked like right now, a year later, whether or not you would’ve had your momma’s dimples, what your precious little voice would have sounded like and what your first words would’ve been, along with so many other daydreams, I choose to focus instead on all the blessings that you have brought to my life. When we named you Paige, knowing it meant “young servant,” I couldn’t wait to teach you how to be a servant of the Lord. Little did I know that you’d be the one teaching me how to be a better servant of His. Although we are on different sides of eternity for right now, you, my sweet daughter, have already helped God teach me so much in this first year of loving you from afar, and I am forever grateful for that. Thank you for making me a...
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Broken but Beautiful

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Broken but beautiful. If someone had asked me how I was doing almost a year ago right after Paige went home to Jesus, I can honestly say that my answer would have simply been that it all felt “broken.” But God has patiently and faithfully shown me how to reorient my heart and look at this journey as yes, broken, but also beautiful. He is showing me how to take captive lies buried in the grief that try to creep into my heart. He is showing me how to replace those lies with His unshakable truth. He is showing me that even though there is so much that is broken around me, He is still good, faithful and loving. And because of His perfect love, even in the brokenness there is beauty. Paige was my first child. When we left the hospital without her, I didn’t go home and snuggle my other babes extra close, cherishing their smiles and beating hearts a little extra. My husband and I went home to a quiet house. Along with grieving my daughter’s absence from my arms, I was also grieving my ...
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Paige Abigail

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“Do you have kids?” The days when that was a “simple” question to answer seem so long ago. “No, no kids yet,” was the easy answer right after my husband, Brendan, and I got married. “Not yet, but hopefully soon,” was the anxious but hopeful answer while we were waiting for God to bless us with a child. “Our first is on the way,” was the answer full of excitement and dreams coming true once we finally found out that we were expecting. Now, that question holds more emotion than I ever knew possible. “Yes, I have one precious daughter… she was born into the arms of Jesus.” This is my answer, my story, now. Paige Abigail was, and always will be, our first child. She is the beautiful blessing that made me a mom and us a family of three. Her story, our story, is not the one that we would have chosen for ourselves, but it is the one that God has entrusted us with, and one that I am honored to tell. Being a mother has been my dream ever since I can remember. It wasn't long afte...
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Covered in Hope

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“Oh Lord, thank You for making me empty, so that You can fill me with more of You. I never thought I would or could thank You for this emptiness, but I can feel you filling me up right now, and I know You have only begun! Please use me and use this story You have crafted, Lord. I want to use it to glorify You, Lord, I’m just not sure how yet…” These are the words that I scribbled in my prayer journal about a week ago. It has been a little over seven weeks since our Paige Abigail went home to Jesus right at the 29th week of our pregnancy. We miss her every single day. Some days, my journal is filled with entries like the one above, and many other days it is filled with tear-stained pages of pleas for strength and peace. My emotions change almost daily, but one thing that I have found that never wavers is my HOPE in the Lord and the promises He has given us. This has truly been my anchor. I have never understood the verse from Hebrews quite as well and as intimately as I do now. “W...
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Praise You in the Storm

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“We needed to believe that God, who gave his Son, was giving us all that we needed and that was beauty enough, even without a happy ending. Though God did not answer my prayer the way I wanted, He answered...He did not say yes to my request, but He did not remain silent. I will make this beautiful too , he whispered.” -Katie Davis Majors’ Daring to Hope How the time flies! It has been several months since I last sat down to write a blog post. Several months full of messy, busy, prayer-filled days. God has been working in ways that we could have NEVER seen coming. Like it did to so many others, Hurricane Harvey left its mark on our life. My husband and I watched our first home together, a home that we got to call “ours” for only a couple of months, flood during the hurricane. While we are still very much in the thick of the “rebuilding” process, I have been truly amazed at the goodness of God every step of the way...how He can even cover such uncertainty and heartache in His pea...
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Beautiful Surprises!

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“God in his goodness has been doing this thing in my life for a long time - surprising me, drawing me along to places I could never have imagined.” Shauna Niequist in Present Over Perfect When I first read this, my whole body, down to my core, resonated with understanding. There have been so many shaky, messy, uncertain times in my life where I couldn’t see exactly where the unpaved road was leading me. What was the end goal in this big new decision? Should I really have ventured down this new path? The road I was travelling on before seemed fine and safe to me...what am I doing!? Can I really handle this? But when I take the time to look back at each of those uncertain, sometimes scary moments, I can see that God was at work. He was taking the lead and “drawing me along to places I could have never imagined.” He was covering my life in joy and I didn’t even know it. When He told me, during college, to apply to be the Director, the leader, of an organization with over 100 studen...
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"You Seem Stressed"

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We’ve all got it...our own “thing” that holds us back from being who we really desire to be. From who God desires us to be. From living covered in joy. For some it’s impatience, some it’s the desire for perfection, maybe it’s being overly competitive, jealous, insecure, fearful, could be a whole litany of different little things. But I don’t even need to skip a beat when I confess that one of my “things” is letting worry, unnecessary worry, lead to ugly stress. So much so, that for Lent this year, I “gave up” worrying! It worked like a charm right over night...NOT! If only it worked that way. But, any time I found myself worrying, especially about something show-stoppingly insignificant, I stopped in my tracks and started praying instead. “I’m handing this over to you, Lord.” Well, Lent has been over for quite some time now, and I am STILL considering this mission a work-in-progress. Little by little I’m learning, though. Baby steps! :) I’ve had a handful of “AHA moments” througho...
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