Big Announcement

My friend wrote me an email the other day saying, "I miss you. I thought maybe I accidentally got unsubscribed from your blog, but then I went to your blog and saw that you haven't been writing..."

I thought to myself, "I miss me, too."

It's hard to know where to pick back up and begin writing again. So much has happened in my heart and life since my legs were taken out from under me last November. It has been quite a journey, and one that I couldn't find the words to express along the way. I felt like it needed to be a season of reflection, healing, and personal growth for me.

I've felt like Mary in Luke 2 where it says that she "kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often." That's what I've been doing. Taking all these "things" that have become my story and pondering them over and over again.

If you don't attend South Bay or follow me on Twitter, you may not have heard that Andy & I are expecting again! We are, obviously, thrilled and cannot wait to meet our Miracle later this year. I am 15 weeks along and (FINALLY) allowing myself to feel excited and expectant as we move out of the "danger-zone". After 6 years of hoping and praying and longing, this is really happening and it brings tears to eyes just to type that.

When we found out that I was pregnant again, it was a strange mixture of emotions for me. As much as I wanted to be head-over-heels excited, I felt very guarded and even a strange sense of grief. I tried explaining it to a friend by saying, "If a parent who had multiple children lost a child, that parent would absolutely be thankful beyond words for the surviving children. But the grief would still run deep for the child that was lost." I wanted to feel nothing but happiness and relief when this pregnancy became a reality; but for me, the grief lingered on a bit.

The following is an excerpt from an email I wrote to my family when I told them I am pregnant:

I can see pieces of the bigger story coming together, brushstrokes from the Almighty. It's just taking my heart time to catch up... to receive it all with joy. I have more peace. I'm just awaiting the joy.

The day our family drove home from that vacation in San Diego last November was a cloudy day. It drizzled on and off throughout the drive. I felt the grayness was quite appropriate. But the sun kept fighting its way through the clouds- visible rays of sunlight shooting down through a hole in the heavens. There was a rainbow that followed us almost the whole way home. It just kept showing back up on the horizon. 

I knew it was God's way of speaking to me but I couldn't receive it. I wanted to, but my heart was so raw. "Stacie, my promises are still true. I'm still the same faithful God. I will never leave you." All day long it would speak to me, remind me, taunt me. At one point there were two rainbows side by side, as if He took out a megaphone to try to get through to me. "I'm not done with you yet. This is not the end of your story. I'm still painting. Beauty is coming. Trust me. Believe me."

So, so much pain. I still don't understand how the pain makes the story more beautiful. I still don't see why it had to be written this way. But one thing is finally coming into focus that had been blurry for too long: I can see that God has been with me every step. 

This baby that I now carry is due the exact week that I miscarried in November. One year later to the date. My due date is November 9. The miscarriage began November 7 and the heartbeat was gone on November 12. It's a strange redemption. A painful, tearful redemption. But a redemption, no less. 

He's got me in His hand. And He's got you, too.  Wherever you are in the story, you can trust the Author to work it all together for your good and His glory. 

Lessons in Processing Grief - Part 2

On Monday, I shared a few lessons learned as I've walked this journey of grief. Today is the continuation of those lessons. The reason I'm writing this is so that if/when ever grief comes knocking on my door again, I can run to these lessons learned and have a tangible reminder of those things that bring healing. The reality is, however, that grieving just takes time and you can't rush it. IT IS OKAY TO GRIEVE. For me, these things just help me to grieve in a healthy way. 

5- Keep a gratitude log on your phone.
OK, here comes a real authentic moment... For about 6 weeks after the miscarriage I was in a pit. I could not think straight...like run a whole cycle on the washing machine (including soap) but forget to add clothes. It was bad. In the midst of that deep soul ache, I never lost sight of the fact that we are blessed. So blessed. Among the most blessed people in the whole world. But the thing I did lose sight of was where all the blessings came from. 

My mind was playing tricks on me and I began to wonder if maybe this is just the way life happens. When I would hear people thanking God for answered prayers or blessings they’d received, I would find myself wondering, “Did God really intervene there or are we just saying that because we’d like to think that’s the way He works?”

How can I thank God for answering my prayer for a good parking space when my friend is praying about cancer? How can I say God blessed me with a new iPhone when there are believers around the world without their daily bread? 

I couldn’t sort through it theologically. Even now, it’s hard to understand.

But here are two things I do know: 
1- God is totally in control of every detail of the Universe, from parking spaces to cancer. And while we don’t understand a lot of His ways, we can trust that He is aware of our specific situation and giving us exactly what He sees fit in every given moment.

2- Gratitude changes our perspective on life. Even from the darkness I knew I was blessed. I think it would have served me well to get really specific about those blessings and to discipline myself to physically write them down. When I learn to see beauty in hair bows holding back curls and new toothbrushes and a kettle whistling for tea on a cold morning, I am training my mind to focus on that which is good. It doesn’t make the bad go away, but it shrinks in it’s significance to make room for the blooming beauty.

Gratitude, even when we’re not 100% sure where the credit is due, can radically shape our perspective.

6- Receive and respond to people's attempts to love you.
When we experience pain, all of life is viewed through the lens of that pain. It’s extremely difficult to get outside of our circumstances to see life from a more balanced point of view. The reality is, all of us have a threshold of pain that, once crossed, blinds us from anything but our pain. It’s true of physical pain as well as emotional.  

When our eyesight (perspective on life) is bad we need to get other people to guide us. The Bible says, “Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when you eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness.” Mt 6:22-23 When I was living in darkness, I needed others to shine light onto my life. 

For many of us, it's hard to receive the love and help that people try to give us. We either feel so deep in a hole that we don't want to talk to people or we'd like to pretend we're strong enough to get through this without help. But the truth is, God created us to need each other. Sometimes we get to bear someone else's burden and sometimes when need them to bear ours. 

I needed my family and my friends...for them to remind me of God’s promises, to give me an outside perspective of my circumstances, to pray for me and share Scripture with me and hold my arms up. In order for them to keep reaching out to me, I needed to keep reaching out to them. To let them know that I needed them, to reciprocate when they text me, to receive their love and advice when it was offered. If I never reciprocated or if I resisted every kind act, they were likely to think I didn't need/want their efforts. But I knew I did. 

Let people love you.

7- Do not equate your current circumstances with God’s love (or lack of love) for you.
I could not fathom ever doing something to hurt one of my children to the depths at which I felt that God had just hurt me. If I had the power to prevent that kind of pain from ever touching my sons, I would do it. Because of this (human and very limited) perspective, I lost sight of God’s personal love for me. I knew that He loved mankind because “God so loved the world that He” sent Jesus. But I thought maybe He wasn’t quite as concerned about my personal circumstances. I knew in my heart that that was a lie that Satan was trying to feed me, but I just could not get my mind wrapped around how God could love me and still do this to me.

Then I listened to this message by Andy Stanley (fill your mind with truth, right?). In it, Andy looks at the story of John the Baptist being in prison (and eventually being beheaded) while Jesus is healing other people and performing all kinds of miracles. John was his cousin! Jesus said that there was no one greater than John. Jesus clearly loved him. So why didn’t he rescue John from his pain? 

Jesus said to John, “God blesses those who do not turn away because of me.” The way Andy Stanley described that verse was that there are going to be things that Jesus allows (even causes!) in our lives that make absolutely no sense to us. And when they happen we will be tempted to turn away because of the pain, but God blesses us when we don’t...when we receive the trial and trust Him in the unknown. His decision to let John die in prison had NOTHING to do with His ability to rescue him OR His love for the one who longed to be rescued. 

His love for us was proven on the cross, and nothing can separate us from or change that.

If you are walking through grief or painful circumstances right now, I pray you will tell yourself over and over again that you are loved by Jesus. Even when you don't feel it or don't know how it could possibly be true, His love is real. He sees you. He is intimately acquainted with the road of suffering. May you run to Him instead of away from Him in your pain. 

Lessons in Processing Grief- Part 1

These next two posts are probably more for me than for you.

I need to have a place to record all these thoughts I've been pondering in my heart. Read along if you like. Pass it along if you have a friend in the same boat. 

In the midst of the pain that I’ve struggled through the last couple of months, I’ve often felt disappointed with myself. Disappointed with the way that I have responded to the grief and loss. There’s no doubt in my mind that I was doing the very best that I could. And I am also fully confident that God’s grace is enough to cover me (be strong in me) in the midst of weakness. I don’t have some mental picture of God being disappointed in me. Just me being disappointed in me.

I know that's kinda a funny thought... "I should be better at this whole grief thing than I am!" But at the same time, I've talked to other people who have felt the same way.

So I’ve thought things over (and over and over again) and I tried to decide what is it exactly that I wish I had done differently. Life is sure to bring grief to my doorstep again at some unwanted moment. What can I learn from this experience to better equip me for the next?

I want to share with you (and record for myself!) seven lessons learned on this journey. I’ll share four today and three tomorrow.

1- Accept that grieving is different than a lack of faith.
I think I had that confused. Not that I thought it was sinful to grieve or be sad. But the intensity of the emotions and the questions that raged made me feel as though my entire foundation had just crumbled. I didn’t realize that what I was thinking and feeling were a natural part of the grief process, not the shattering of my faith. 

Sadness does not equal weakness. And brokenness does not equal hopelessness. 

2- Keep filling your mind with truth.
When something happens that shakes our world, we are desperate to make sense of it. Out minds start to run at Mach speed in a thousand different directions grasping for something (anything!) that is still solid enough to hang on to. Pastor Andy Stanley said, “I am most teachable when I am most vulnerable.”

When the rug got ripped out from under me, I knew how important it was to keep filling my mind with truth instead of letting Satan just have a hey-day in my head. So every day I would read the Bible and books and listen to podcasts and worship music...each pointing me to Jesus. I gotta tell ya, though, it was painful. To be honest, there were many days that reading the Bible brought more pain than comfort...left me with more questions than answers. My “quiet time” each day felt like open heart surgery without anesthesia. 

But that is how healing takes place. Without continually exposing my wound to the Healer, He couldn’t clean it, apply ointment, and bandage it properly. Trying to conceal a wound could, at best, lead to a nasty calloused scar with improper healing or, at worst, lead to infection that could destroy my life.

Prioritize time to read, listen, and reflect on truth.

3- Say truth out loud, even when it feels fake.
I think one of my core values in life is being authentic. If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that I share the real me with you, not the me with lipstick and wrinkle-free khakis. I think being authentic is INCREDIBLY important. But in the midst of my lowest lows, it didn’t serve me well. 

I wanted to be honest with myself, my husband, my friends, and sometimes even on this blog about how I was doing. There’s value in that. To deny reality is no help to anyone. But I felt that I couldn’t say things that I knew to be true about God because suddenly I didn’t feel like I knew them to be true anymore. I couldn’t claim the promises because, in my crisis of belief, I didn’t feel the promises.

However, there is a lot of power in saying (aloud) the promises of God, regardless of how you feel. I wish that I had mustered up the strength to say to people: 

“I know that God will work this together for my good.” (Even though I can’t see it at all.)
“I know that nothing can separate me from the love of God. His love never changes.” (Even though this seems more cruel than loving.)
“I know that God is near to the brokenhearted and He is holding me in the midst of my pain.” (Even though all I feel is emptiness.)

It felt fake to me, which is why I held back. But even when it feels fake, it’s not fake. It’s the most real thing in this broken world.

4- Write down God’s past faithfulness to you.
God has been faithful all of my life (all of your life too!). Why would I doubt that He will be faithful now? When I am reminded of how He’s provided for us, miracles that He’s performed on our behalf, the specific stories of how He’s divinely guided our lives, it gives me courage. I want to work with Andy to make a list of these stories so that if I ever wonder again, I can run to my list and breathe easier. 

• the time we didn’t have enough money to pay our utility bill and an unexpected check from an old friend showed up in them mail.
• miraculous provision to pay off Andy’s student loan in less than a year
• the story behind getting the domain for South Bay Church’s website
• and on, and on, and on...

He was faithful then; He will be faithful now. 

Check back tomorrow for Part 2