Thoughts on loss

This post has been coming for a while now and after hitting and killing a beautiful deer with our car a week and a half ago, the Lord prodded my heart that the time was now. Strange, I know.

My family had an opportunity recently to minister to a small community that has suffered tremendous loss. In 2008 an EF5 tornado ripped through the north part of the town followed by an even more devastating flood. Since that time, this small community has tragically lost several of its residents. 

The town is spiritually dead. Sometimes when things happen that we don't understand, we shut God out. People begin to say, "If God was so good, why would He have let this happen?" I love Billy Graham's daughter, Anne's response to this question after Hurricane Katrina. "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"

Ouch.

During the year of 2008, I was dealing with my own loss. Loss of a dream, loss of loved ones. These words came to me as I was lying in a bathtub one morning feeling like I had lost my sanity: 

I am broken.

With the weight of the world on my shoulders, I come to Him again, Broken.

My Savior needed me to get to this point.  A place where I once again put my faith

in Him.  I cry out to Him.  It feels like He's not listening.  I beg for mercy.  Silence.

Hope is fleeting.  He's teaching me something.  He has to be.

I have turned into something I don't recognize.  An unloving, selfish monster.  Full of

pride, full of fear, full of doubt.  Doubt-an interesting thought.  The One I so willingly

trusted as a child. Why do I not trust Him anymore?  Have the callouses on my heart

caused my unbelief.  My unbelief is laughable if I think about it.  When I look back on my life.

The things he has brought me through, how he's protected me and carried me.  Shameful.

So now I've recognized my wrongs.  I need Him and Him alone.  But He leaves me here.

Why?  I'm tired of being in this muck.  I want to get out.  Day after day I search for answers.

I listen to His word and try to obey.  But my circumstances do not change. I'm sinking deeper

and deeper and wonder if I am ever going to get out.

Then I hear a whisper, "grab my hand."  I think it's been there all along.  The dirt in my

face has clouded my vision.  Now that I think of it, He's been whispering all along as well,

but my head was too focussed on my circumstances to hear it.  I grab on.  I'm in deep so

the pull is hard.  It stretches my body and hurts a little,  But now that I'm out, I can breathe.

He wipes the dirt of my face and sets me high upon a rock.  When my eyes focus I realize this

rock he has set me on is actually the palm of his hand.  He's got me.   My wounds instantly start

to heal.  I lie down.  I want to rest in Him.  He holds me there.  He reminds me of his promises

once again.  He reminds me that those who wait patiently for the Lord will be renewed like the

eagles.  He tells me every perfect gift comes from Him.  He tells me I'm forgiven.  Forgiven.  What

a thought!  I entertain the thought that I don't deserve that gift.  He reminds me who paid the price

for that precious gift.  I willingly take his forgiveness.  He offers me so much more.  He offers me

pure love, peace, joy unspeakable.

I start to wonder, why did I ever leave His side?  Why did I stop trusting Him.  I got complacent.

I was becoming lukewarm.  It wasn't really anything that I was doing.  It was more about what I

was not doing.  I was serving Him just enough to get by.  I let fear get a hold of me so I could not

bring the good news to the lost around me.  Saying all the right things but doing none of the right

things.  I was lukewarm in the flesh.  So He broke me.  He broke me and it hurt.   But now I am

better for it.  Just like when our parents disciplined us as we were children, our Heavenly Father

disciplines us so we can be restored back to him.

I am so thankful I have a God who loves me enough to let me be broken for a while, so I can

see my need for Him, and then rescues me once again.

Written out of a broken and contrite heart.

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008.

Naomi Probert

I pour my heart out to encourage you. God knows your hurts. He wants you to trust Him.  This isn't the easiest post to write. But there is good news! One of the songs that my family sings has this line, "God sees the storm from the other side...He knows the lessons learned and just beyond the clouds He sees clear skies. He speaks peace to the raging storm when peace could not be found, He already sees the rainbow, when we see only clouds." 

I don't know if we had made the decision to adopt if we hadn't experienced this loss. God took us from a place of complacency to a place of listening to His voice and His call on our lives and trusting that He knows best. 

Unfortunately, loss is a very real part of adoption. Babies have lost their mommies. That's a loss I cannot fathom. Adoption is a way to restore something terribly broken.  My prayer is that we can lead Lydie and Samson through the periods of loss they may experience and to let them know that God will NEVER EVER let them go. It's the best gift we can give them, the knowledge of the love of God in this broken world that has denied it.