Early Lessons from Sharing My Story

Last week I shared about how God has been using my time in Kentucky to call me to share my story more. As I have attempted to do that through conversations in person and by writing this blog, God has been teaching me about myself, Himself, and how He works in our stories. I want to share a few of those thoughts with you today.

1. The Power of Prayer:

Maybe not surprisingly, when I pray for opportunities to share before I meet with people, God often answers my prayer by providing a clear opportunity and the boldness that I need. The prayer brings me peace and reminds me of why I share - to praise God for all He has done in our lives and to tell others about the healing power of Jesus.

2. It’s Not Just About Sharing:

God doesn't open a door to share every time I pray about it, but He does bless my willingness. My story is not my identity and God's light shines forth from each of us when we are open and willing with what He would have us do. I am learning the hard-won faith, wisdom, and character born out of our suffering is apparent and encouraging to others even when we don’t get the opportunity to share with words. I can be discerning about when, where, with whom, and how I share because God works in all kinds of ways.

Denali National Park 3.5 weeks before Oliver was born.

3. Sharing Helps Us Not Feel So Alone:

Not wanting to be the one sharing something sad when everyone else had only happy things to share has kept me from sharing in the past. But as I opened up more, I realized that everyone has things they are struggling with and are longing to share while also feeling uncomfortable sharing. When I share, I end up not feeling so alone in my struggles and suffering, and the people I share with don’t feel as alone either. Instead they often feel comfortable sharing themselves, and the Lord blesses us both. When we share we are participating in God’s work in the church. In 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 Paul reminds us: "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God." When I share my story, I am receiving God's comfort and passing it along.

4. Pain Can Be Healing:

People don’t always respond the way I want them to when I share, and often the sharing triggers memories and feelings in me that I would rather avoid. However, I am learning just because it is painful doesn’t mean it isn’t healing. Rather grief that is stirred and brought to the forefront is felt, processed, and exposed to truth, which leads to healing.

5. It is God Who Does the Work:

I can share with confidence knowing it is God that does the work in my heart and others, and He doesn't judge success in the same way that I do. Just because I feel pain or the situation is awkward or the number of blog views is low, doesn't mean God isn't at work. The Holy Spirit is always at work in each of us, and His ways are varied!

6. Sharing Is Healing and Joy-filled:

While I do experience pain as I share, I have also been surprised at how joy-filled and healing the creative process required to share a story is. When I challenge myself to write another paragraph of a blog post, to figure out how to add a subscribe button and enable comments, or to gather pictures from the week or saved on a harddrive, the creative process pushes away the anxiety and pulls me forward into something new. My brain gets a workout, and I have things to look forward to.

I don't know what God's plan is for this blog, my writing, or my in-person sharing, but it is exciting to see God at work and challenging me in new ways. I look forward to continuing to share here and watching God at work in me and in others through my story of loss, healing, and a God who never stops working on our behalf.

Called to Tell Our Stories

My family is getting ready to move again, and I am getting so excited! This time we are headed to Michigan, which is my husband's home state, my adjoining home state, and where we both attended college. We are going to be 6-7 hours away from both of our parents, which is closer than we have been since we graduated college 18 years ago. We also have some extended family in the area that we are looking forward to spending time with. As we prepare for the move, I am also reflecting on our year at our current duty station in Kentucky. I will always remember my time here as the season when God called me to share my story.

We arrived at our current location in Kentucky four years after Oliver died. As I met new people, I had a choice. I could talk about my daughter, our dog, my husband's work, and our current life and keep the loss of Oliver to myself. Or I could be brave, risk feeling additional pain or being misunderstood, and share my whole story. At first I was hesitant to share. It was still hard to push the words out of my mouth: "I have a son who passed away four years ago at the age of ten". I knew from previous experience that sharing led to awkwardness and too many people responding in ways that were hurtful instead of helpful. I didn't want to be known as the person who lost a child, or the oversharer who talks about her loss all the time. But not sharing also didn't feel true to who I was and led to me keeping lots of other things to myself as I tried not to slip up and share stories that revealed what I had chosen not to share earlier. Also, I knew that not sharing doesn't help me on my healing journey, it doesn't help others find hope in their own pain, and it doesn't give me an opportunity to glorify God for all the ways He has worked in my life.

A recent adventure with our homeschool group.

God was working on my heart and bringing me to a new place of healing. I felt Him calling me to share more. I was able to talk to some new people I met that I did awkwardly share with, and they encouraged me to continue sharing. I also talked to some friends from previous duty stations who have walked this journey with me, and they also encouraged me to share. Through these conversations, God opened my eyes to the fact that I wanted to share but I also wanted to wait until it wasn't painful to share. Once I was able to acknowledge I was waiting for that, I was also able to acknowledge a day without pain in my sharing wasn't going to come. It was always going to hurt to say the words. And I was never going to be able to control the way those I was sharing with responded. But that didn't mean I shouldn't share. God also opened my eyes to see the ways that it was painful not to share. If not sharing wasn't protecting me from pain, but was just trading one pain for another, maybe it was time to make a different choice.

God also used the study of His word to call me to share. I ran across Psalm 107:1-3: "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story - those he redeemed from the hand of the foe, those he gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south." These words rang like a clear call to me: "Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story". I was also studying the Gospel of John with Bible Study Fellowship. In the 4th chapter of John, we see the Samaritan woman encounter Jesus at the well. After talking to Jesus, she leaves her water jar, goes back to the town, and says to the people, "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah? (John 4:29)" The people hear her story and some of them come to meet Jesus and believe. The theme of being willing to tell our story comes up again in John 9, when Jesus heals a blind man who is then questioned by the Pharisees. We see the man tell his story, and the telling strengthens his own faith and leads others to believe. The study of John showed me we too are called to tell people what Jesus has done for us.

Apparently Squire Boone, brother to Daniel Boone,
escaped from some enemies by hiding in this cave
(different from the larger cave above but on the same
property). He praised God for his deliverance and
considered it sacred ground afterwards. He eventually
 came back and built a gristmill in the area with his
sons and was buried in this cave. It reminded me of
being hidden by God in the cleft of a rock.

And so I started praying for opportunities to share and being intentional when God provided them, I started saying Oliver's name more in conversation worrying less about whether I had already shared about him or not, and I started this blog. Next week I want to share with you some of the things God has teaching me as I share. As we prepare to head to Michigan, I am thankful for the opportunities I have had to share here, the beautiful people I have met, the adventures we have gone on, and all the ways God continues to heal and bring purpose to me and my family.

10,000 Reasons

I always loved the song "10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)" by Matt Redman. It reminds me to give thanks for each new day, to look for and name all the ways God is good to us, and to never stop praising Him. We were still singing the song quite a bit at the church we attended in Tennessee when my sister passed away in 2018.

I cried a lot in church after MaryJo died, but especially each time we sang the third verse:

And on that day when my strength is failing
The end draws near and my time has come
Still, my soul will sing Your praise unending
Ten thousand years and then forevermore
Forevermore

The verse made me confront the reality of what happened to MaryJo, that she really died. It also brought to the forefront of my mind my regrets: I didn't spend her last days with her holding her hand, I didn't get to see her one more time, I didn't buy her those alpaca mittens she debated about buying the last time we were together, I never traveled overseas to visit her, and more.

When Oliver died a year later, the same verse brought me joy. As a mom, I had seen my son live out those words, and I was so proud of him. He fought for life but was at peace. He remained funny, amenable, and thankful in his last moments. Watching Oliver, knowing how God was there with him, giving him strength and welcoming him home, gave me peace about MaryJo's last moments, and gives me peace about my final moments someday too.

As I daily name big and small reasons to praise God, I am reminded of His character and of how He always keeps His promises. He has defeated the grave and has gone ahead to prepare a place for us. He is always with us. He sent His Son to die in us place. 

Praise the Lord, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

Psalm 103:1

Forevermore.

Hot chocolate while watching college softball
(Louisville vs. Florida State)

Dogwoods on a walk with family

Baby chicks

The Heavens Declare He is God!

My mom took this picture and a few of the other ones.

Answers to Prayer

God has many facets. He refuses to be put in a box, and anytime we think we understand Him and His ways, we quickly find out we are wrong. Isaiah 55:8-9 reminds us: “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’” In addition, God is always doing something new. In Isaiah 43:18-19 God declares, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” After Oliver died, I saw life as a struggle where God doesn’t answer our prayers the way we want Him to and yet is with us and helps us. I had gotten one big no and lived expecting other nos. I still prayed and expected God to work, but I was always gritting my teeth, whitening my knuckles, and expecting the "even if you don't" situation to arise. Thankfully, God wouldn’t leave me there. The thing that stands out to me the most that He used to open my eyes again to all the different ways that He works was my time in leadership with Bible Study Fellowship (BSF). There I began to see again that while God does use suffering to bring about His glory and will in ways we don't understand this side of heaven, He also longs to answer our prayers with big, resounding yeses.

So fun to get to fill this post with photos of all the new things
God is doing in Kentucky this spring!

Yes to Prayers I Wasn't Even Praying Yet

The way God orchestrated my service with BSF answered prayers I wasn't even praying yet and showed me God still had a purpose for me. My family and I moved to eastern Washington one year after Oliver died. We wouldn’t have chosen on our own to leave our support system at this time, but being a military family this is what we do. We were also looking forward to the move and being pushed out of some places of grief into something new. The town we were moving to had a BSF group for women and children. My daughter and I were interested in joining as I had participated in BSF for one semester in Alaska when Oliver was one year old and really enjoyed the opportunity to study the Bible together with other women. We ended up attending BSF for all three years we were in eastern Washington, studying Genesis, Matthew, and People of the Promise Kingdom Divided. I have shared previously about how God used the study of these Scriptures to bring truth and healing to my heart (https://carryingsheaves.blogspot.com/2024/02/harvest-from-gods-word.html).

After being a participant for my first semester back at BSF, I was asked to be a leader of one of the discussion groups. I loved the opportunity to serve other women and also be served as I participated in the weekly training and discussion time with the other leaders. It was a refreshing break from homeschooling and a safe opportunity to start serving more again after Oliver's pasing. I came back as a discussion group leader my second year of BSF. At the end of my second year, the leader asked everyone to consider being open about where we would serve in the upcoming year, especially as we were praying for the opportunity to expand our preschool program and would need more leaders there. I sent her a Slack message, which said I was open to serving wherever she needed me in the next year. A few weeks later she sent me a message asking if I would pray about supervising the preschool program for the upcoming year! I was really surprised to be asked to supervise something, especially outside of the current area where I was serving. But God used my previous words of commitment to serving wherever I was needed as well as some additional confirmation to help me say yes to this new position.

I found so much joy being with the young children each week. When Oliver died, my husband and I became more thankful than ever for his Sunday school, Awana, and homeschool Bible teachers who worked diligently each week to teach him about God and how to love and serve Him. Serving in the preschool program ended up being an opportunity for me to say thank you by participating in this work as well. Working with children was painful right after Oliver died as it was a reminder of all I had lost, but in this new position I found children still brought me joy and happy memories as well. It was like digging up treasure that had been buried for a time after Oliver died. Looking back, God was answering prayers I wasn’t brave enough to pray about what my healing could look like with a big YES. It was like God was saying, "YES, I still have a plan for you, and that plan is good and will bring you joy!"

Yes to Working in Mighty Ways

Serving in the preschool was so different from serving women for me. I think as a discussion group leader, it was easy to feel like my study and preparation were enough. Sure, sometimes people responded differently than I expected or sometimes we covered challenging topics that I wasn't 100% comfortable with, but for the most part I prepared each week, was taught and mentored during the leader training time, led the discussion as best as I was able, prayed for God to fill in the gaps, was happy enough with the results, and moved on with my week. But the preschool program stretched me! Each week was so different, and we never knew what to expect or how the children would respond. There was crying for mom, hitting friends, forming enemies, attempts to escape the classroom, an inability to sit still or keep their hands to themselves, shyness, one million questions and comments, distractions, illness, a need for volunteers, etc, etc., etc., all while we were attempting to share the Word of God! In the preschool program, there was no pretending that we had everything together. Instead what is true everywhere was especially obvious here: it is God who works in the hearts and minds of those who come to study His Word.

As the preschool supervisor, I got to pop into all the classrooms and see God at work. Just two months into my new position, I made this list of some of these displays of God's provision and power:

• a four-year-old pronouncing Jeroboam with the confidence of a preacher 
• a classroom of children singing Holy, Holy, Holy at the top of their lungs 
• a group of two-year-olds, still uncertain about what to do, patiently sitting in their chairs and whispering “Jesus” to Bible story questions
• a three-year-old moving from arms, to lap, to chair alongside, to sharing about her pumpkins as she gained confidence in her classroom
• a group of ten infants and toddlers, about five of whom show up in different combinations each week, who have grown comfortable enough to start throwing things and who are so close to having a structured Bible time each week
• volunteers who arrive just in time to comfort an upset child
• a new children’s leader joining us just as we were getting weary with unexpected absences

Observing God at work in the lives of His littlest children reminded me how much God cares for us and how He is always at work for our good, not just in suffering but also in joy!

I also got to see God answer specific, desperate, bold prayers. Week after week, leaders and volunteers would need to call in sick at the last minute, and I would pray, leave messages or texts for everyone I knew to contact, and then pray again. “God, I am short people for today. I've contacted everyone I can and haven't heard back from anyone. Please send someone to help us so that the children will be safe, cared for, and have a chance to hear the Word of God.” And He would. Time and again someone would call me or text me back out of the blue and fill a need. I also saw God answer prayers for specific leaders who had concerns for that week’s teaching and for the ability to reach specific children who were struggling with something in the classroom. And I saw God answer our prayers for children and their moms to feel loved and supported. These prayers seem small when I type them out, but they were prayers that were important to me, and it brought me healing to see they were important to God as well, and that He was delighted to say YES. With each yes, I saw again the God described in Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”

My walking buddy kept stealing my camera's
focus.

When we pray, we can know God always hears us. He even hears the prayers we don't know to pray yet. He is always with us and always at work, whether His answer is no, yes, or not yet. His resurrection power is at work within us, and He is steadfast and faithful. He is also doing new things and working in new ways that we can't predict. I continue to struggle with expecting God to only work in challenging ways in my life, and yet He continues to surprise me with blessings and joy around every corner as He reveals new facets of Himself to me. "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." Ephesians 3:20-21