Many of you have asked how you can help us and if there's anything you can do. Praying for us is huge. Please do not stop praying. But I also welcome your suggestions on how to live without regrets. How do you bring timeless memories into your family? How do you enjoy each moment? How do you make time to stop and be?
What if you only had four more months with one of your children? What would you do?
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The past few days it has meant this... Bella has fallen asleep during one of her bottles and instead of putting her in her bed for a nap, I just hold her and let her sleep. Yesterday I read Isaiah 40-43 while she slept. Today, I napped with her. These times have been sweet precious moments with my Lord, my prayers and my baby.
2 comments:
Erika, that photo is so very precious. She looks "all yours" and you look "all hers". I don't understand the plans God has for Bella, but I do know that you and Mark were hand-picked to be "her all" right now. You are most certainly the hands, feet and heart of Jesus to her. I feel pain in your story but I also pray with hope, trusting that the Lord is not going to abandon Bella or you.
Perhaps you could put together a book of photos and memories as a personal keepsake. You could also make one for the adopting family. Although just the thought of this seems hard, I think it will be such a special token of God's hand over Bella's life through you, and vice versa. You and Mark have taken such amazing care of Bella and you have been with her through this period of her life when no one else has. Bella will always be a part of you and your family. This could serve as a way to remember without regrets.
Praying for you.
Been a while huh Erika? I've been reading y'all's updates on occasion and stayed up to date with what life has looked like for you all.
Having recently seen another family whom I love go through a similar experience, I am so incredibly sorry for what has happened to you. Having recently experienced what feels like a series of losses', the pain feels very real. And it is.
You posed the question: How does one live without regrets?
If I am reading things right, the question is: How does one walk through life with joy at the merciful and gracious plan of the Father?
Gee...even as I type that I am compelled to take a long look at myself and ask the same question.
....
It seems like the automatic reaction to try to move on from the pain and grief without sitting, being sad, processing, and doing that with friends. Left to my own world I have a thousand regrets. I mean sure, I'll always regret punching Mark Kettlewell in the face in 5th grade thereby giving him a scar above his right eye...and I should :) I guess it seems like we're addressing some of the deeper things. When I am choosing to be in community and to actually discuss reality with friends/a counselor, I am able to do just that, learn about reality. So long as I choose not to name feelings and name emotions, I am living in a quasi-dreamland where shapes are kind of true, colors are kind of pure...but not really.
One thing I learning about the Psalms is that there are very few of them that are meant to be processed and taken as individual psalms. For instance, the so-called laments almost always are written with the community in mind. After all, that is the context in which they are given, Israel as a corporate people, not a group of silly individuals.
As I was sharing with a friend the other day about things I was fearful of, kind of in a "I have the corner on the market of being fearful", he stopped me:
Friend: Mike, you realize how fearful I am in life?! I am paralyzed by it at times...I'm fearful of ___________ and fearful of ______________ and fearful of ___________ and ____________________ and ______________
...but you know what, because I shared that now I'm a little less fearful, and so are you.
Friend: Mike, I think the goal isn't that I wouldn't be fearful, I think a lot of it is that I wouldn't be fearful alone.
I couldn't agree more.
To quote Sally Lloyd-Jones, Jesus makes the sad things not sad anymore.
How? Well, I think it is more than just "Look at Jesus and the life that he lived - he experienced the same things we did, therefore we can make it!" While that is a true statement in which we draw from, I think the reality that is life-giving is so much richer than that. Jesus takes the regrets of loss and pain and makes them ok by turning ashes into beauty, by taking the full breadth of sin so we can have the full measure of righteousness.
Tonight I am writing a paper on marks of maturity as seen through Acts. One thing that pops off the pages is that the apostles, the elders, the lay people, they are a people who move forward while certainly looking behind (at their history, and even at the pain of the history, like in Stephen's speech...Paul's multiple accounts of his conversion)
...but most importantly they look behind them at "Jesus who was raised" or the resurrection. It is palpable that they continually look to this in order to move forward, in order to see things as new, in order to not have regrets. They don't just see it as a memorial, but as a power-source that allows the sad things to be ok. We have a God that accomplishes what he sets out to do (Acts 28:28).
Thanks for giving me space to even process this in my own life.
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