I find comfort...

Grief is a strange thing. I've lost loved ones in the past but always when that person had lived long lives and reached old age. When the end of their days became obvious it was with sadness that my family watched them slowly slip away from us. Day by day, little by little, we knew that person was leaving this world. Some took solace in believing they knew the condition of our loved ones salvation, some simply took comfort in the fact that that person had lived x amount of years, that they'd seen their children grown, held their grandchildren and great grandchildren, and some found comfort in nothing.

But no matter how each person handled their grief they did grieve. They hurt. They healed. Time has a way of getting us through even the deepest hurts. For some that's all there ever is...the passing of time so the grief is less sharp, the pain dulled, the loss less recent. For others we find strength in the Lord and it's on His strength that we get through what we couldn't face alone.

The recent loss of my unborn baby has left a hole in my heart where dreams and a tiny life lived just days ago. There was a time when I didn't think my faith would survive the loss of one of my children, when I thought I would forever blame the Lord for taking my child if I ever had to go through that. My faith has changed since then. It's grown, deepened, matured. And in that faith I discovered a strength that got me through the loss of my unborn baby. Instead of blaming the Lord I turned to Him when I hurt, instead of blaming Him I found comfort in taking my hurt to Him. I did question Him a time or two. I know that it isn't my place to question my Creator, that He has reasons and plans I can know nothing of, but...I'm still human, still flesh. I still hurt and grieve and in that pain, during those sharpest moments I cried out...why?

The pain of loss is like the crashing of the oceans waves, coming and going, ebbing and flowing.Waves are mighty and strong. They can lift a person and toss them or gently rock them back and forth. They hold a power we never will. Grief can crash into us in a second, with no warning, it can knock our feet out from under us and toss us to and fro. It can also rock us gently, hurting just enough to remind us that we loved...and lost.

Two days ago the waves were crashing over me, burying me in pain, knocking my feet from beneath me and tossing me around. I couldn't get my footing, couldn't stop hurting. I reached out to my Lord and he got me through the pain.

Today...the seas are calm. The pain hasn't come crashing over me. It hasn't flowed around me. Today the waves gently rock...there but with nothing but a sweet reminder of the love I had because I loved. Today I have found my footing. I've remembered that once I thought I'd lose my belief in the Lord if ever I lost a child and I've found great comfort in knowing that losing my unborn baby has only brought me closer to Him.

I know the waves aren't through crashing yet, the pain isn't over, but that's okay. I  can think of my baby with happiness and sweetness. I can remember the joy I felt while it lived in my. And now I find a kind of bittersweet joy in carrying it in my heart.

There are poems online for losing a baby, poems about miscarriage. Some talk about tiny feet tiptoeing into our hearts. I find comfort in those little footprints left on my heart. And I find comfort in the memory of that tiny life, gone before it was, that has forever changed me.

And I find comfort in the knowledge that in my deepest hurt I turned to my Lord, not away from Him.

Guard your heart

Four days ago I held my baby in my hands. It was precious, amazing and so very, very heartbreaking because my baby was so very tiny. Way too small to ever have a hope of living. It was gone before it came into this world.

The day before I lost the baby my midwife warned me to guard my heart, to prepare myself for the possibility of losing it. Guard my heart.

Against a baby I loved from before conception.

Guard my heart so I wouldn’t hurt. Guard my heart so things would be easier on me. Guard my heart from…hurt, pain…but most of all against my baby. I knew when she told me that there was no way I could do that. But even if I could have I wouldn’t have wanted to.

To guard my heart would have been to distance myself from my baby. To protect myself no matter the cost. At this moment as I struggle through the aftermath of losing the baby I wanted so much I’m glad I didn’t even try to guard my heart. It would hurt a whole lot more today to think I’d locked my feelings away from my baby just to protect myself from pain.

Instead I can take comfort in knowing that my baby was loved for all of its very short life. It was wanted. It was protected, even from the so-called protection I was supposed to put in place against it.

I’ve known people that have lost babies, children, that go through life as if that child never existed. They hardly mention their names, don’t acknowledge their birthdays. I know everyone deals with loss in their own way but that is a way I could never live with. My baby, given to us for such a short time, never ours to hold in life, was a gift from the Lord. It brought blessings and happiness simply because it was alive in me for a time.

We don’t know the Lord’s plans, His will isn’t our will. I would never have chosen to lose my baby but knowing now how it turned out…if I could go back and choose whether or not to conceive that child all over again…I’d choose the baby. We’re all given a certain number of days on earth. To live is to die. It’s a simple fact of life. Everyone that lives will someday die. The Lord knew long before any of us how many days each one of us would have. Some are given so many days they live to be a hundred years old or older and some…like my baby…only get a handful of days.

I’ll never snuggle my baby in my arms, never kiss its cheek or tickle its belly. I’ll never know the pure joy of watching it sleep or know what color hair it would have had. But I had the joy of carrying it in my womb, of loving it for every one of the days it was given. I had the painfully amazing experience of marveling over tiny arms and legs, a little body that was beyond precious to me. And I’ll have the joy of carrying it in my heart for the rest of the days I’m given.

Guard your heart.

Protect yourself.

I understood what the midwife was telling me. Prepare yourself for this possibility. But guarding my heart was never an option. Not all that long ago I was told something kind of along those lines about a completely different matter but it was over something that has the potential to be very painful. Prepare yourself, get ready…

It doesn’t matter how you word it, it all comes back to those three little words…guard your heart. Protect yourself. There was a time in my life many years ago when I did just that. I didn’t trust and I didn’t love. It was a cold, lonely place to be.

Love hurts. Everyone has heard that expression. If we’ve lived very long we’ve experienced it in one way or another. Opening ourselves up to love is pretty much a guarantee that sooner or later we’ll get hurt.

I know someone right now that has, over the last year, discovered that love can hurt. As a result this person has closed themselves off. They’ve chosen self-preservation over love. And they’ve become untouchable as a result.

I take solace now that my baby was wanted through every moment, however brief those moments were, that it lived. I wanted it, my husband wanted it, all it’s brothers and sisters wanted it, it’s aunts and grandparents wanted it. For those all too brief number of days it lived in love.

I couldn’t have guarded my heart and I didn’t want to. I chose not to guard my heart the other time I was warned to do so either. To guard my heart would be to close myself off from those I love. Instead I chose and continue to choose to put my trust in my Lord and to love those he’s entrusted to me for every second of every moment He lets me have them.

I’ll always be glad I chose not to guard my heart. My baby lived in love and it died in love.

Are believers chosen by God?

Are believer’s chosen by God?

 

 

 

 

Ephesians is written by Paul and is generally considered to be a letter to the church of Ephesus but it isn’t really known who the letter was written to. The church of Ephesus was one of the recipients but there were most likely other churches that received this letter. It may have been a circular letter sent to multiple churches.

                Many of the original Greek manuscripts actually have a blank where the King James Version and the New International Version of the Bible have the words ‘at Ephesus’.

                Colossians 4:16 refers to a letter written to Laodiceans. That letter is presumed by many to be lost. Many Bible scholars think that letter may be the epistle to Ephesus.

                Whoever the letter was originally sent to it has a theme that is unlike any of Paul’s other letters. This one is written to the true church, the body of Christ. It gives standards for living but also goes into detail on who the body of Christ is. A careful reading of Chapter one tells us who they are, or rather, how they came to be.

 

                Ephesians 1:4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love

                -cross reference Romans 8:29-30

                For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called, those he called, he also justified, he also glorified.

Ephesians 1:11 In him we are chosen having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will. NIV

The Greek word for chosen is foreknown.

 

¹¹ In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. KJV

 

-Cross reference Romans 8:29-30 (see above)

2 Timothy 1:9 Who has saved us and called us to a holy life- not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.

 

All of these verses lead us to the same conclusion. God has called (chosen, predestined) his believers since before the creation of the world (v.11, Romans 8:29). They were chosen by grace since before the foundation of the world. His plan to save lost sinners was made in eternity past. (1 Peter 1:20. Revelation 13:8 (All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.⁾ although not written from the same side of things alludes to it by simply looking at the verse in opposite. If their name’s weren’t written in the book of life at the time of creation, the believers names were.

If believers, or the true body of Christ, were chosen at the beginning of time. What of the one’s that weren’t chosen? Were they predestined to not be believer’s? If we believe, as the scriptures above state, that God chose the body of Christ before the beginning of time then what are we to believe for all the others? Can we believe that there are those that are called, chosen, predestined, foreordained ( 1 Peter 1:20 KJV) and not believe that there are those that are not allowed to be a part of the true body of Christ?

This is a short study I wrote not long after I realized what I was seeing in Scripture. I wrote it in response to a question that was asked during a Bible study group I attended on two occasions. There's more on this topic that I could cover now but I felt I should share this as it is.

This second

Scripture tells us we are to set our minds on the things above not on the things of the earth. Once I found that a difficult task but as my journey took me closer to Christ I discovered it wasn’t hard at all. My soul started looking to those things above without any help from me.

Without me knowing quite how it happened Christ became my constant companion. He’s there when I wake up in the morning, there as I go through my day, there when I fall asleep at night. I know He’s there because I feel His presence in me.

But while I’m looking on the things above there is the earthly part of my life. The everyday happenings that go on with me and around me.

Last night I was reminded of something.

Somewhere I read a saying that went something like treasure those you love because someday God will need them back. I never forget to love my family and friends. Never forget to tell them I love them. But sometimes in the busyness of the day I may forget to show them. I may forget to enjoy them.

Right now, as I lay in bed trying to hold onto the baby in my womb, I am learning to treasure every second. Circumstances in my life the last seven months have taught me what it’s like to truly live in the moment, to grab onto today because it may be all I get, to enjoy what I have right here right now. I learned that lesson through circumstances I would never have chosen. I thought learning to grab onto today was as far as I could take…

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Matthew 6:34

…but I was wrong. In the last twenty four hours I’ve learned it can be taken even further. While I struggle not to worry about what’s going to happen, I am learning to treasure every second.

Because this second may be all that I get.

I can’t know what the next second will bring with my unborn baby. And as I treasure each second and face the next with a world of unknowns I’m learning a lesson I’d have rather not learned in this way. I’m learning it isn’t just today, isn’t just this moment that we must be concerned with. We aren’t promised tomorrow.

But we aren’t promised another second either.

This second, this single dot in time, is all we can be assured of. Life happens in an instant. And so does death. One second a baby isn’t there, the next…conception. One second someone is alive, the next…death.

This second is precious because it may be all we ever get.

Raised on lies

My daughter told me last night that the only thing she sees when she opens a Bible is lies. She doesn’t think the Bible is filled with lies but to her the Bible represents everything she grew up being told and believing and because my faith, my belief, the way I see Scripture has changed that has taken all those lessons she learned as a child and made lies of them.

When she said that it sent waves of shock through me but after the surprise of what she said and how she said it wore off I realized something…all those years I spent going to ‘church’ services, all those years I was raised as a ‘Christian’, all the things I was told and taught to believe…when I started seeing the truths in Scripture I came face to face with the exact thing she was describing last night.

I remember those early days of seeing Scripture as a monergist. When I knew what I was seeing. I would come across a verse that said one thing and I had to erase everything I believed because I’d been taught wrong.

I had a very hard time with the verses about the elect, about the Lord choosing those he wishes and not saving the others. Not for myself but for my children. I’d always raised them to believe in Jesus, that they had to not only believe but also keep His commandments. Admitting, even to myself, that nothing I said or did was going to make a difference in their salvation was a very hard step to take. Letting go of the belief that if I could just ‘lead them to Christ’ and instill a deep enough belief in them that they would be saved was a step I struggled to take.

I stumbled everytime I came to a verse that said all who believe, or if you confess and believe, or any of the other verses that said similar things. I struggled because my mothers mind didn’t want to let go of the belief that I could teach my children to believe so that they would be saved.

There were other things I struggled through too, where what I’d been taught all my life came up against what I was reading and seeing in Scripture, but none of those things were as hard to change my belief on as the belief that if I just taught my children right, raised them right, that they would be saved.

But with every  belief I had challenged I began to lose a little more of my confidence in the ‘Christian’ upbringing I’d had, I lost more and more faith in everything I thought I knew. My foundation was shaken. Lies…I had been fed lies. Lies at the hands of those entrusted with the spiritual well-being of so many people. Lies at the hands of those that raised me to be a ‘Christian.’ Lies at the hands of those that assured me my salvation was set.

My daughter was right. We were fed a pack of lies and I swallowed a good number of them. Not only did I swallow them but I turned around and fed them back to my children. Time after time. Day after day. And as I put each spoonful of lies into their young souls, souls that were soaking up everything I taught them, I firmly believed what I was teaching them because it was what I had been taught. And all the preachers and all the Bible study and Sunday school teachers couldn’t be wrong. Nor could all those ‘Christian’ books. I fed those lies to my children, piece by piece, bite by bite, teaching them to believe so they’d grow up to believe.

And I did it all because I loved them and I was worried about their souls.

Now here I am…so many years after becoming a mother for the first time…and discovering I raised my children on lies. There were things I told them over the years, taught them when they were young, that truly were lies. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny….outright lies. Lies I corrected. But the lies of being a ‘Christian’… I don’t yet know that all those lies have been corrected in me.

And even now, knowing what I do, believing as I do, there are still things I hesitate to tell my children. Verses I don’t want to introduce them to. Because some of those beliefs they hold, some of the things taught to most ‘Christians’, are so much easier to swallow than the real truths are.

When my daughter told me everything she’d ever been taught to believe was a lie it made me pause, made me stop and think, made me wonder. It pushed me out of my comfort zone, it challenged me. And it made me think, and think, and think.

There was nothing I could have done to stop the change in the way I believed. I didn’t choose to believe the way I do, didn’t choose to see things the way I do. But back when I first started understanding what I was seeing I tried to share that with my daughter. I tried to bring her on the journey with me. Because she was my daughter, because she was my sidekick. Because what I did she did with very few exceptions. And because I decided I didn’t want to continue going through life not showing my children the depth of my faith.

So I showing them.

And in doing so I pushed my daughter further from the Lord than she had ever been. All because I was trying to correct the lies. To show her the truths that I hadn’t shown her before. But it wasn’t until she told me that what she’d been raised on was all a bunch of lies that I realized that I too had been raised on lies.

I always thought....

“I always thought I wouldn’t have to do this if I was married.”

I say that to my husband from time to time. I said it when I checked our son’s bike, I said it when I fixed the bedroom door. There are just some things that I assumed I’d never have to do if I was married. I told my sister the same thing when she and I were in one state, my husband in another and we were changing the tire on her car.

I had in my head that there were things a husband would take care of and I’d never have need to do those things again.

Today, as I lay in bed, attempting to hang on to my unborn child, three hundred miles away from home and my husband, I want to say those words. Only…it’s not that I never thought I’d have to go through something like this if I was married, I just never thought I’d have to go through it alone. Not that I’m alone. I have my children, my sister, and most importantly my Lord.

But I want to curl up in my husband’s arms. To talk to him, with him. To hear his voice, to let him soothe some of my fears. Instead…I’m here and…

I never thought I’d have to do this alone if I was married.

The Lord and His timing aren’t the same as what I’d choose. I would never have chosen this particular trial, would have done anything I could to prevent it but I got it anyway. And as this trial swirls not around me but inside me I’m left wishing it had never happened and longing for a slightly different scenario if it had to happen. If the Lord would have just timed it a little better… three days sooner and I’d have been with my husband, four days later and I’d have been with him. Instead He placed it right in the middle of the time when I’m not home. He placed it at a time when I’m away from the person that is my safe place, the person that makes the trials easier to bear, the person that I want with me…always…but never more than now.

And by placing me in this time the Lord has once again placed my dependence firmly on Him. I always depend on Him but I also depend on my husband. Today, as I keep in close contact with my husband…I keep in close contact with my Lord too.

I had forgotten

The first step I can remember taking on this journey to Christ was when my second child was born with heart problems. In what seemed like an instant I learned what it meant to depend on the Lord because I had nothing else to see me through. In that moment I went from going through life mostly able to control what was happening around me, or so I thought, to having no control at all. I did what everyone does in those situations.

I prayed.

And prayed.

And prayed.

Then I kept on praying. I prayed through days of holding my daughter because I was afraid to put her down. I prayed through nights of sleeping with her on my chest because that was the only place she seemed able to get comfortable…and it was the only place I was comfortable with her being. I prayed through doctor’s visits and tests. I prayed through surgery.

My faith took a turn through all of that. I was dragged onto a path I couldn’t see then. Over the nearly twelve years since that daughter was born I’ve taken more and more steps, been pulled further and further onto the path, had my faith deepened until everything I am hinges on my faith in the Lord.

But I had forgotten.

I remembered what it was like in those early days and years with my daughter. I remembered what we went through. I remembered that time as being rough physically and emotionally. I remembered the worry, the fear, the helplessness.

But I had forgotten.

I had forgotten the soul deep fear. The near terror that fills your heart and mind as you fear for your child. And the total dependence on the Lord. A dependence that is brought on by the fact that you are afraid and helpless. I had forgotten what it was like to pray for your child’s life.

Last night I was reminded. This time the fear and worry, the prayers, are all for my unborn baby. I’d do anything I could to save this baby and yet I can do nothing.

Nothing but wait. Nothing but pray.

Prayer is my strongest weapon. I know that. I have complete faith in the Lord. I know he has a plan for my baby, for me but that doesn’t make this time any easier.

There are other situations in my life right now where I know I’m totally dependent on the Lord for the outcome, other situations where I’d like to make things happen a certain way. But as hard as those things are they haven’t come with this soul deep fear. And it’s that fear that reminded me what it’s like to be fearfully in dependence on my Lord. To put my faith in Him when my fears threaten to take over.

It was a reminder I’d rather not have had. It’s a reminder I got anyway.