Links for Hope Moms: Spring 2020 Edition

We want to share with you links to posts, videos, and resources from around the web to uplift, help, and encourage you in your walk with the Lord as you grieve.

1. {Even If Not, He is Still Good: Lessons from Habakkuk} // “Earlier this year, we were expecting our first son, Joshua. On April 1st, we woke up excited to see his sweet little body at our anatomy scan, only to face one of the deepest valleys of our lives. Sometime before our twenty-week scan, the Lord saw fit to take Joshua home. We went into the hospital to deliver that evening and went through the longest, saddest night of our married life. After induction began, I looked at my husband in tears and clearly remember saying, “I have got to believe that God is still good.“
   
2. {God Hears Your Prayers}// “God hears the tired mama prayers and the I-don’t-know-what-to-do prayers. He hears the prayers of the dissatisfied wife and the wife who just wants to help. He hears the groans of the suffering and the ache of the one who doesn’t even know what to pray. He hears the lonely and the lost and those longing for love. He hears the I’m-completely-exhausted morning prayers, and He’s already anticipating the middle of the afternoon I-don’t-think-I’m-going-to-make-it prayers. And the middle of the night prayers? Those are special to Him as well. So keep praying, child of God, because He hears you. God’s listening right now, and He’ll still be listening tomorrow.
   
3. {How Should Christians Feel?}// “In the hospital, and in the many months after, the Psalms were my lifeline. Everything else felt meaningless. Everything else was too heavy and exhausting. In the Psalms, I felt understood in all my raw emotion. My praise and my tears were all there, verse by verse. Even when I couldn’t understand my situation, the Psalms understood me.“
   
4. {A Grief That Heals} // “So often we seem to think that grieving equals a lack of strength. We’re afraid to allow ourselves space to grieve what we have lost, or perhaps what we will never have. We’re afraid of what others will think of us if they see us in our grief. We equate our grief with a lack of trust in the sovereignty of God. Yet even Jesus allowed himself the time to grieve while here on earth, as we see so clearly in the story of Lazarus’ death (John 11). The truth is that the process of grieving is a healthy step in our own spiritual growth.”

Ashlee is the Editorial Coordinator for Hope Mommies and author of I AM (Hope Mommies, 2017) and Identity (Hope Mommies, 2018). She and her husband, Jesse, live in Milwaukee with their children—five on earth and two in heaven.

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