Recommended Reading

I am reading a wonderful book called Holding on to Hope by Nancy Guthrie. It's a very short book that parallels the story of Job to the suffering that people go through in their lives.

One of my favorite quotes is from page 11--"Our culture wants to put the Band-Aid of heaven on the hurt of losing someone we love...But they don't understand how far away heaven feels, and how long the future seems..." This is so hard for people around us who want us to just "move on". We know that we will not stop talking or grieving over the loss of Virginia and the baby that we lost through miscarriage. We know that both of the babies are in heaven but it doesn't minimize our loss at all.

A very difficult concept for me to grasp is that all of us need to hold on to everything in our lives loosely. We are just stewards of the gifts that God has given us--we are not entitled to them. This is really difficult even though I try to make God #1 in my life--so often I let other things or people come before Him.

Another thing that really resonated with me is that even though I don't want to leave my family here on earth--I have two of my children already in heaven--it gives me yet another perspective of heaven and a yearning to see both of them.

I've really struggled recently with hearing about people talk about having faith for healing. I fully understand that there are parables in the Bible talking about faith the size of a mustard seed moving mountains ... Sometimes I think that God can bring so much glory out of the suffering and the times that the healing does not happen. Yes, I would much rather have everyone that I know and love be healthy and happy but unfortunately there is sin in the world. The author talks about this as well and says that most people pray for the healing and add a ps about if it is God's will and that it really should be the other way around. We should pray that we would allow God to be glorified in our lives no matter what happens (definitely easier said than done) but it's something that we should all strive towards.

I have no idea why we had to lose Virginia and the baby through miscarriage but I know that God will be with us during this difficult time. I've seen so many other Christian people create such wonderful ministries because of the losses in their lives (I definitely pray that we could all help other people without the suffering). It's my prayer that God would use us to minister to people that are also suffering and that through those ministries that the story of both babies would live on.