10 results for tag: The Comfort of His Promises

The Unending and Unchanging Love of Jesus

Our life in Christ as believers brings true freedom. Because of this merciful gift of new life, we are absolutely free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2), and we no longer live in bondage (Galatians 5:1). Jesus ultimately gives us freedom from suffering eternal death (John 6:47), but His life and resurrection were never meant to provide the same type of deliverance from suffering on earth. As Hope Mommies, we have realized first hand that we aren’t free from this suffering, because we now know death on earth—not just death that happens near us, but the death of life that began inside us. It’s the kind of suffering that often leads to ...

Receiving the Riches of Christ

“What do you need right now?” My mind drew a blank nearly every time a person asked that question as I stared at the face of loss and death two times over. My first thought, an inner cry that only made its way to my lips but a few times, was: “I need my daughters back. I need them alive in my arms. I need what you cannot give.” Beyond that, I didn’t really know. “My God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:19 So what does Paul mean when he says that God will supply all your needs when it seems like what you need the most cannot be given back on this side of heaven? ...

The Healer of Broken Hearts

How can a God we cannot see, feel, or often times hear be near to us? Is God really near to us? The day after coming home from giving birth at 37 weeks to my perfectly formed—yet stillborn—baby boy, I flipped the Scripture card on my kitchen window and Psalms 34:18 was the verse waiting to give me hope. I left it there for nearly a year because I often needed the reminder as I journeyed on my grief path. “The Lord is near the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” Psalms 34:18 When I was in high school, and the guy I thought was my future broke up with me, I thought my heart was broken. When my first choice for college didn’t ...

For The One Who Feels Stuck in Grief

After my son Max died, I struggled to perform even the most basic of daily tasks. I couldn’t clean my house or cook. I had no interest in putting on makeup or doing my hair. I couldn’t imagine sitting in my office attempting to do anything productive at work ever again. I felt like I was moving in slow motion, trying to escape a quicksand that threatened to pull me under. And if you asked me to think about anything bigger than these basic, day-to-day activities, I felt paralyzed, completely incapable of movement. Grief has a way of convincing us that we are stuck, broken. It whispers in our ears that something irreparable has been damaged inside ...

Longing For Deliverance

“Call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you will glorify Me.” Psalm 50:15 I could say these words with conviction when there was no trouble in my life. But when trouble came and I faced the death of my children, those were the days where I needed to know what His deliverance really meant. In those days of finding out my first and then second daughter would not live, I cried out to God to deliver me from the pain and deliver my daughters from death. I wanted to be free from suffering. I wanted my daughters to live on this earth with me. I wanted it to not hurt so bad. I wanted His deliverance to look like my idea of deliver...

Choosing to Draw Near

I walked down the hall as tears began to form in the corners of my eyes. It had been just a few days since I had learned that the babe I was carrying in my womb was already gone from me. Another still heart. Another journey through grief and loss. Moments earlier I had been talking with a friend at church. She too had experienced the loss of a child, and I had been looking forward to connecting with her, knowing that she understood the heartache I was enduring. But throughout our entire conversation, she never spoke of my loss. Even when I mentioned how difficult of a week it had been for me, she changed the subject by telling me about the mischief ...

He’s With Us in the Fire

My eyes opened slowly as the nurse touched my arm to wake me. She smiled. “I’m so glad you slept well. I didn’t see the need to wake you,” she tenderly stated. I had slept solid all night, which was such a gift after riding the emotional rollercoaster of the few days prior. Her hand rubbed my arm as I blinked to see the sun peering through the hospital room windows. Eight hours earlier I had said goodbye to my only son—birthed from my body, still and lifeless, yet perfectly formed. He was small and beautiful, his nose one of my favorite features. I would always remember that cute-as-a-button nose.  As my feet hit the ground to begin ...

His Faithful Nearness

There are a few parts of God’s character that I have grown to love more deeply since losing two babies back to back in the same year. We lost our oldest son, Jacob, seven hours after he was born. Ten months later, we said goodbye to another baby who we never got to meet face to face. I was in the bottom of the trenches, and I was so lonely.  Grief does that, doesn’t it? So, I was lonely, but I was also fearful. What would our future look like? After all, life wasn’t supposed to end up this way, but mine did. I was so fearful that I’d never leave the trenches of grief. It was hard to imagine that life would ever change. So, I was fearful, I ...

Strength For Those Who Are Weary

Confession time—the Bible I use is still my Student Bible from high school. I’m three years shy of forty, and I still haven’t graduated to the adult Bible. But don’t worry. It’s in great shape because of my nifty Bible cover that displays the "Footprints in the Sand" poem. You 90’s girls know what I’m talking about. Maybe you had that Bible cover too, or perhaps you had the poster up in your Sunday school room at church. This poem talks about a man who looks back on his life in a dream and sees two sets of footprints during his life’s journey. They belong to God and himself. However, the man notices that during the hardest ...

Finding Rest in the Lord

Rest. If there was one thing that seemed to elude me in the days, months, and years following the loss of my first two daughters, it was rest. Every part of my being was weary and overwhelmed by the simplest tasks. Little vacations here and there that were supposed to invite some sort of respite did nothing to reprieve me of the pain of loss searing through my bones. I struggled to find some experience, some place, some outlet that would calm my often anxious, lonely, and sad heart. I prayed in the year after the loss of my second daughter that it would be a year of rest. It was nothing of the sort. That is, it was nothing like how I would have ...