Groaning

Friday, May 23rd will be one year that our Christianna Joy went home to her Savior and Love.  When I write that, I still think, but I want her here, home with me!  How jealously I still cling.  But I don't think even God minds.  It is borne out of a deep passion and love of a mother who DELIGHTED in her daughter.  Each moment.  Wishing I had taken life a little slower over those quick ten years, but not wanting to replace anything.  

Some say the goal of the first year after the loss of a child is to survive.  It has certainly felt that way on many days.  And yet there has been more than survival.  There has been a shedding, a stripping, of desire for the things of this earth.  A groaning, at times even a DEMANDING, that all things be restored in the final redemption of this earth and of our bodies.  That Christ reveal more of who He is, to me, to our family, to this world.  And a decision that in the face of tragedy and catastrophic loss I will seek transformation and not destruction by the Grace of our Lord Jesus.  

His Word has been my Bread, my Life, my Hope.  And I praise Him for it.  

Christianna, we miss you, we love you, we long to see you again, soon.

Daddy and Mommy

Acacia, Katriya, Isaiah, Shamirah, Joshua

Romans 8

Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.  For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope,  the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.  For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.  We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it.  But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)

And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.  (NLT)