Month: March 2013

Have you ever experienced a time in your life when the worst has happened? Maybe you lost your job or got a divorce, or a loved one passed away. As I sit here reflecting on this Holy Saturday I think that’s how the disciples must have felt all those thousands of years ago. Their Savior and friend was gone and they were lost and confused. They were grieving and in pain. Everything they had hoped for was gone and unlike us, they didn’t know Easter Sunday was coming.

As many of you know I recently experienced a very painful time in my life. Losing our twins was certainly the most painful thing I have ever experienced. All the hopes and dreams we had for them were gone in an instant and like the disciples, we were left lost and confused.  So what do we do when our lives feel like they are stuck in the day in between? When the worst has happened and we don’t know what do to next. When we are confused and lost and overwhelmed by grief and pain.

When I visited Minnesota recently I landed in Minneapolis and as we flew in I was amazed by how white everything was. The whole city was covered in snow. The trees, the houses, the roads. And although it was breathtakingly beautiful there was something very somber about seeing all that snow. In the winter you can’t see the green grass or the leaves on the trees. The animals are all hibernating and there really isn’t much evidence of life at all. I think that’s how it must have felt on that first Holy Saturday. As the disciples considered all that had just happened and that their Savior and friend now lay dead in a tomb there would have been no signs to tell them what was really going on, under the surface, beyond where they could see.

The amazing thing about the winter though is that even as the snow lays on the ground and there are no visible signs of life, just under the surface beyond where the eye can see things are beginning to happen.
I think when we consider Easter it is easy to skip over the importance of this Saturday. It’s easy to focus on Good Friday and the fact that Jesus died for our sins and then to focus on the joy of Easter Sunday and the fact that he has risen again. But the day in between was just as important. God was working even though we couldn’t see it. Jesus was completing the work he started on the cross the day before.

The last few months have felt like a cold and dark winter for me, at times I felt like there was no hope. But what I have discovered is that even in my darkest hour when all was lost He was still working and I’m beginning to see the signs of Spring.  As He begins to show what me He is doing and how He is carving out a new life for us in a new place, hope is beginning to rise. He’s reminding me that He sees it all. He sees my pain and my grief and all my hopes and dreams and He has not forgotten. He has held me in my darkest days when I was lost & confused and has already begun to redeem and restore all that I have lost. As we live in the day in between and as we wait, we remember the promise of the resurrection that Jesus lives and that even when all seemed lost God was already working His redemptive plan. A plan to save the world and restore His children and their relationship with Him.
Its like when you see the first buds of spring break through the snow. Its still cold, the snow is still on the ground but its beginning to melt and the promise of Spring is just around the corner. And as the disciples discovered just one day later, God always redeems, always restores and always has the victory! Christ is risen! And I will hold on to that promise and that hope till the Spring comes.

 

I have a new found respect and honor for my mum. My mum & I have always had a good relationship. We went through the normal teenage years were we argued and I felt she didn’t understand me. Through my early twenties as I was discovering who I was I was convinced that I was nothing like my mum. I never doubted that she loved me and that would do anything for me but I just thought we were nothing alike. From being a little girl I was full of emotions and my mum is very logical and straight forward. With the best intentions, she would always show me the good in a situation and help me to see that things weren’t as bad as I thought.

People would always tell me how much like my mum I was and I always thought it was just that they didn’t know me that well. Over the last year though I have discovered much like her I am and what a privilege and blessing it has been to be raised by such an incredible mother.
When my siblings and I were young my mum stayed at home with us while my dad was a Pastor in inner city London. She continually made sacrifices for us, she sacrificed her time, her money and her freedom. She raised us to be strong Christian people with good character and she loved us all deeply. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that there has never been a time in my life that I didn’t know she loved me, even when we disagree. But loving people that deeply comes with a cost and that cost is the inevitable pain you will undoubtedly feel.
My mum once told me that when she looked at me the first time she realized that if anything ever happened to me it would break her. There is an unexplainable bond between a mother and a child and that bond has the power to break your heart into a million pieces.

I have observed my mum during the difficult times in my life and I have seen how much she wants to protect me from pain and heartache and how much it pains her when she can’t.

Most recently I looked into her eyes as my heart broke at the loss my own children and saw the pain she felt for me. Her own child was in unexplainable pain and there was nothing she could do about it. She could protect me from it or fix it. All she could do was hold my hand through it and trust me to Jesus.
Now one question I have pondered a lot recently is at what point do you become a mother?  Is at the moment that you hold your child for the first time, is it when you see them on the ultrasound screen, or when you see those two pinks lines on a pregnancy test. And the conclusion I have come to is that you are a mother from the moment God begins knitting them together in your womb. As he knits them together that bond begins and I believe that it is never broken not matter how long you got to keep them. Now I only got to keep my babies for 10 weeks and in the scheme of life that seems like such a small an insignificant amount of time but even so, they are my children and I am their mother.

I saw a quote recently that said “A wife who loses a husband is called a widow. A husband who loses a wife is called a widower. A child who loses his parents is called an orphan. But…there is no word for a parent who loses a child, that’s how awful the loss is!” Neugeboren.

Honestly, I believe there is no word because you are still a parent, you are just a parent without a child. And that is a kind of pain and loss is like no other. Although the overwhelming grief is starting to ease there still feels like there is part of me missing and there is. I am missing my children and a part of my heart will always be with them.
My husband and I decided to name our twins. We wanted to acknowledge their lives and to recognize that they were our children if only for a short time. We named them Ezekiel James and Phoebe Joy and although I don’t know for sure that they were a boy & girl that’s just what my heart told me and I feel like God has confirmed to me on numerous occasions. I have a necklace with their initials on that I wear every day and I had a picture created with their names on it. When we have future children we always tell them about their older brother and sister.

At first, after we lost the twins I said that I never wanted to get pregnant again because the pain & grief was so overwhelming that I couldn’t imagine risking having to go through that again. But as time has passed I have realized that whether we adopt or more biological children I am still risking the chance of pain. And unfortunately, until we get to heaven pain in inevitable especially if we allow ourselves to love and be loved.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements….. To love is to be vulnerable.” C.S. Lewis