We Are Heard When Sorrow Has No Words
I've always liked to talk. Growing up, I could prattle on about various topics, and as an only child, there was no one there to stop me. My parents were a captive audience to all my daily accounts, questions, and dreams. In college, my favorite course was speech. A class where I could get up and talk, and others sat there and listened. Words came easily (sometimes too easily). Words never failed me until my daughter died.
When we found out Kinley would never breathe on her own, I had plenty to say to God. I cried, I yelled, and I pleaded for a miracle. After Kinley ...
Crystal’s Story
In the emergency room I looked at the sonogram screen and couldn’t really see Adalynn Grace. I just thought the equipment wasn’t the best there since it was the ER. A few hours before I had a gush of fluid and didn’t expect to be told it was my water that had broken at 20 weeks.
Unfortunately, we had trouble with this pregnancy even before it started. My husband and I had prayed for 3 years to add this beautiful life to our family of three. We were over the moon to find out that we had been blessed again with another little girl. My oldest daughter was more than ...
Sing Hannah’s Song Through Suffering
In May of 2012, I walked down the aisle to the song “How Great Is Our God.” I was 33, my husband 34, and it had felt like we had waited an eternity for each other. Perhaps it didn’t feel like that to my now husband, Kevin. He’s much less dramatic than me. I knew that I wanted our wedding to be a taste of the wedding we’re really created for. The one where we meet our Savior, face to face, where we sit at the great wedding feast that will go down as the one for the ages, and praise the One who was faithful to us in the midst of our unfaithfulness. That day in May ...
Could I Have Done More?
This Q&A series is intended to help you take steps forward in wisdom. Lay your questions before Scripture with us; find in the ashes that wisdom “will place on your head a graceful garland; she will bestow on you a beautiful crown” (Prov. 4:9). What questions about grief, God, or the Bible do you have right now? Contact us here.
When we carry a child in our womb, we often feel our child’s life and development is ultimately in our control. The baby is in us and part of us. We share blood and oxygen. We feed him or her. Doesn’t that make it all up ...
In the Word: Our Great Reward
Welcome to Hope Mommies In the Word devotionals. Over the next few weeks, we will be meditating on Psalm 19 together. As we study these truths together, we’d love you to use the comments as a place to dialogue with us about what you are learning and share your answers to the questions below. We pray that you hearts will be encouraged as you dig into God's Word each week with us!
“Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.”
Psalm 19:11
READ:
We have been exploring what it means to love the Word of God. It teaches us ...
Held Together
Our third child enters the world. The room is silent. There is no noise, only hushed commotion—no cries from my babe. The air is thick, but peace is present. I look up and ask my sister, “Does my baby look like a baby?”
“Oh goodness, yes,” she replies.
I then ask, “Is it a boy or a girl?”
All goes quiet for several seconds, and Dr. G gently replies, “It’s a boy.” Brandon lets out a cry from the sitting room.
The nurses gently clean off my son. They weigh and measure him. 6.6 ounces and 7 inches of perfection. They wrap him in a tiny blanket ...
Why Do I Have To Go Through This?
“It’s Not Fair!” cries the sister as her older sibling is allowed to do something that she cannot as yet do. Perhaps most of us can remember being that sibling who thought our parents were not being fair. Justice was what they loudly demand. Why do I have to be denied this when he or she gets to have it?
Peter's Death Foreshadowed
My sense as I read John 21 is that Peter had something like this going on when he asked the Lord what was going to happen to John. Peter had just been told by the Lord that he was going to a place he did not want to go. Others were going ...
Becky’s Story
April 17 was a day that I will never forget. A day that will be etched in my heart my entire life. A day of great sorrow and immense pain—yet a day of hope.
My daughter was a healthy thriving baby until April 17 when I knew something was wrong. I had lost another baby early in pregnancy but got pregnant shortly after, leaving little time to grieve, process, and heal. It made this pregnancy much different than our son’s—who is living on earth. I was more cautious, hesitant, and fearful.
That day she wasn’t moving as much so we went in to get checked. From ...
Through A Wound: A Letter to My Hope Baby
Tomorrow will be nine years without you. Nine years since we found out that we lost and heaven gained.
My heart has been a hurricane of emotion through the years, changing direction and intensity without warning or predictability. There have been days when I just couldn’t seem to back away from a cliff edge of grief and pain. And others where I have been gripped by the fear that as time passes and the normalcy of life continues to settle in around me you will be forgotten by others, or your life will be thought less significant.
But dear one, I have come to realize ...
Blessed Are the Persecuted
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
-Matthew 5:10-12
The beatitudes present to us a way of life that is a stark contradiction to our natural responses and inclinations. The first seven beatitudes described a list of characteristics that we ought to pursue as believers....
