A Letter to my Husband on Father's Day

Dear Phillip,

I remember sitting in the Warehouse on our college campus, talking about our hopes and dreams, our passions, what we wanted to do with our lives. You were a business major. I was a missions major. We talked in length about how are dreams and our passions could actually fit together.
From the beginning you had direction. Sometimes it didn't appear that way to others looking in. Sometimes we were uncertain ourselves. But deep down, you knew. You knew where you were headed, you knew what you wanted to do. You had drive.

And while we got caught up in all things life, you still set your sights on what you knew God was calling you to do. When family thought we were just a bit crazy to be pursuing missions as a career choice, when we seemed stuck in dead end jobs just trying to make ends meet, when we continued to reproduce little people and people really thought we were crazy, when seemingly endless obstacles continued to bombard us in countless directions....you pressed on.

Through all of that you held on. You may not have known exactly where God was leading us, but you did know that God was leading us. You may have had your doubts at times, but you still followed God with all of your heart, with all of your passion. You gave Him everything. And in turn, you gave me everything.

I didn't marry you because I thought you would buy me all the fancy things. I didn't marry you because I knew we would be living a grand life or because I thought I would get everything I ever wanted. I didn't marry you because everyone wanted us to and thought we should be together. I married you because of your character, because of your heart, and because of your desire to serve God.

I had an inkling our life wouldn't be normal. Deep down I knew it wouldn't be easy. But I knew that God was the center of your life, and I knew that I needed that in a husband more than anything else.
Because of you, I'm a better me. You've been patient with me, kind towards, loving and full of generosity. You take the time to draw things out of me, knowing it's not something I do well. You speak gently to me, even when we are arguing. You are quick to apologize and you long to reconcile when we are not on one accord. You are my shelter, my protector, the man that has my heart.

All of these things that you are to me, you are to our children as well. You are kind and patient with them, though you don't think you are. You are loving and affectionate towards them. They adore you. When you take them out on little dates, it melts my heart. When you get down on the floor with them so you can be their human jungle gym, I can't help but smile. You are creating a place for them to feel confident and strong, but also where they can have security in feeling scared and vulnerable. You are their hero, the man that loves them undconditionally, their dad.

My heart could burst into a thousand pieces with all the respect I have for you, the love that wells up inside of me, the joy I have in being your wife. I'm beyond blessed that you are the father of our children, that you are our provider, that you care so deeply for us. I cherish you and the way you treat these kids, the way you love us, the way you faithfully and diligently provide for us without ever complaining.

I'm the luckliest girl in the world.

Thank you for being my husband and for being the father of our beautiful children.

You make us smile and laugh every day.
You teach us the important things in life.
You provide for our needs and wants.
You love God and seek Him with every part of you.
You work hard.
You are diligent.
You are kind and caring and compassionate.
You are loving and respectful.
You are a respected man.
You are faithful.
You are driven and you are successful.
You are a hero.
You are adored by your children.
You are my love.

I finally get it

Mom,

I can't imagine what your life was like with 2 babies when you were just a baby yourself. I have young kids now and I'm in my 30's, and I feel overwhelmed a lot of the time. I can't imagine what your life was like living far away from family and not having a community. I live far away from family now, but I have a supportive community.

You share stories with me about when we were younger, and although you have never complained about how hard life really was for you, I know. I know it was exhausting, I know it was scary at times, and I know you were lonely.

Your life wasn't easy, but we never once knew that. You showed strength and determination, but most of all you showed love. We always knew you loved us. There was never a doubt. It was clear that you put us first in your life. You protected us and sheltered us when you needed to, you stood up for us, you safeguarded us against the harshness of life. You stayed with us and for us. You stayed to protect us. In all of those ways, I know that you loved us unconditionally.

My heart goes out to you. As a mother myself, I finally get it. I understand all that you did for us. And I'm filled with love for you. I mean, I've always loved you. You're my mom and you're an amazing mom. But it wasn't until I became a mom myself and truly saw the sacrifices you made for us that I understood your love.

I finally get it. I understand your love for me and my brothers now. I truly get why you stayed up late "helping" us with our class projects, why you let me come home from school when I was "sick and throwing up" knowing I just didn't want to be at school, why you made us tomato soup and let us drink it out of sippy cups just because we wanted to, why you couldn't leave me at home when you saw me crying through my bedroom window. I get it now.

I finally get it. I understand that you DO love me more. There's no question, there's no doubt. You're my mom. You will always love me more. I get it now. I will still always respond to your "I love you" texts with "I love you more" because that's what I've always done. But I'll probably add a winky face because I get it now.

A mother is strength. She is the embodiment of what it means to love unconditionally, to carry her family through all of life's ups and downs, to hold it all together. A mother's love is eternal, it is extreme, it is powerful. A mother endures babies that wake up through the night, a toddler's nightmares, messy hands and faces, marker on the walls and floors, dirty diapers and endless piles of laundry, tantrums and all day whininess, a disaster of a house because once you clean the kids destroy it all again in seconds. A mother endures these things, but she also embraces it. Life with kids might be messy, exhausting, constantly draining, but a mom knows that it won't last forever. The babies start sleeping through the night, the kids start cleaning up after themselves, those dirty diapers are no more because your kids are potty trained, and soon each and every little body will grow up and move out.

A mom knows this, and so she embraces those hectic and difficult days. Not every time, and not every moment. Because we all know that it can be relentlessly overwhelming some days. But that's motherhood. The good with the bad, the loveable and cuddly with the rowdy and chaotic, the sweet little kisses with the gnashing of teeth, the tender and quiet moments with the screaming at the top of your lungs. Motherhood.

I just want you to know that I finally get it, mom. I get what it's like to be a mom, to feel all of those emotions, to love with every fiber of my being. I finally understand your love for me. At times, I want to apologize for never getting it  before, for not showing you the appreciation you so rightly deserve, for not loving you like you love me. But I know that's silly because no one can really understand until they experience it themselves.

Please know that I appreciate you. I am grateful for all that you did in my life, how you raised me, what you taught me. I'm thankful for the moments you thought you might go insane, but were able to hold yourself together for our benefit. I'm thankful for how you took care of us when we were whiny and overtired, when we complained about every little thing, when we had ungrateful attitudes for the meals you prepared for us and the things you bought for us. Thank you for the nights you stayed up to hold us and rock us when we didn't feel good, for spending endless hours kissings our boo-boos, buying us new clothes each school year, teaching us to tie our shoes and ride our bikes, helping us with our homework and taking us to all of our practices and games. And thank you for the most important thing you could have done; teaching us about God and instilling a greater purpose in our little hearts.

Thank you for loving me enough to let me pursue the plans God has for me, for gracefully allowing me to move away and take your grand babies with. Thank you for cultivating my passion for writing and always encouraging me to pursue that. Thank you for speaking hope into my life when things were really difficult, for crying with me when life was so painful, for tenderly caring for me with the loss of life and enthusiastically sharing the joys of new life.

Your role in our lives may have seemed like just the thing that moms do. But it was more than that, as it should be. And I, for one, finally get it and I am so thankful that you were there through all of that.
I am thankful that I finally get it.

Thank you for being my mom. I love you (more ;-) )

Bittersweet

Today. Such a bittersweet day for me. Months ago I anticipated this day, dreamed about it, hoped for it. Today was the due date for the baby we lost last September.

For almost 3 months I imagined what this day would look like (or more accurately a week from this day because all of my babes have gone past their due dates), how labor would begin this time around, who would watch our trio while we were in the hospital, how the Littles would take to this newest addition.

When I should have been 11 weeks pregnant, the ultrasound showed that the baby had no heartbeat. Today I am sad that I don't have a newborn to hold in my arms or smother with kisses. I'm sad that the kids don't have a new sibling to meet. I'm sad that I can only imagine what that baby would have looked like and how his or her personality would have blended in our family.

After we lost our baby, I again imagined what this day would look like for me. Would I take the day to myself and mourn the child we lost, would I spend the day with the family and celebrate what God has so richly blessed us with, would I share my thoughts and feelings with others, or hold on to it deep in my heart.

But months ago I didn't expect to be expecting again. So this day also has a new meaning. Today I am mourning the baby that we didn't get to see and hold and know this side of heaven. But I'm also rejoicing that today I'm 16 weeks pregnant with the little avocado sized miracle that God has blessed us with. Today I still get to anticipate the joy of carrying a baby in my womb and delivering it into this world.

It's weird, ya know. Living in this moment of bitter and sweet. Mourning a loss and rejoicing in a life.
When I think about that baby, I still cry. Even though I know I'm going to have another baby, I still cry about the one we didn't get to have. The one we won't be bringing home this week.
And I also know that when we get to meet this little one that I'm growing right now, I will think how sad and crazy and weird it is that I never would have had him or her if we were having a baby today. It's crazy. And it's hard to wrap my mind around.

It's the same thing with Pax. I can't even imagine my life without that little guy. But the truth is that we miscarried 3 weeks before he was conceived.
Again, that was a moment of bittersweet. When that due date came around, I was pregnant with Pax. Still mourning the baby we lost, but rejoicing in what we were about to have.

Bittersweet.

One thing that the bitter of this reality has made clear is my many blessings in life. When I'm mourning the babies we have lost way too soon, it reminds me how precious and sacred life is. I look at the three beautiful children God has given me and I am overwhelmed. I look at my growing belly and feel itty bitty baby kicks and I'm amazed. I am so blessed. I cannot take these children for granted. I cannot complain about the bundles of energy, the fit throwing toddlers, the crazy attitudes and messy little faces because I am so blessed to call them mine.

That doesn't mean that days aren't hard. I have 3 toddlers! But it does mean that I can put it all in perspective. I have experienced three losses. I know the pain of losing babies. But I also know the joy of having babies. I am richly blessed. And so on this bittersweet day I can mourn what was taken so soon, but I can find joy in what has been given to me again.
I can remember what will never be, but I can also rejoice in what is to come.

I will never stop mourning for you, sweet baby girl. And every year on April 9th I will think about you and celebrate you and cry because I never got to hold you. But I am grateful that you get to be with the One that made you, and someday I will get to meet you!

A Redemption Story

Last year on September 23rd we lost something so wanted and so dear to us. At 11 weeks pregnant, I miscarried a precious little baby. The loss was devastating, as any loss is. And it has been quite the journey of suffering that we have gone through.
But my story of loss was only the beginning of the story. God had something in store that I could never have imagined, that I couldn't see in the midst of the agony of losing a baby.

This loss was different than my previous two miscarriages. Mostly because I was different in this season of life than I had been the previous years. God had already taken me through a season of learning (and failing a lot) to trust in Him. He had been working on my heart to see a different side of His character; His compassion for our suffering.

I'm just going to be honest and admit that my two previous losses ended in me being angry with God, blaming Him for allowing it to happen. I rationalized that He's God and He could have miraculously saved those two babies, but He chose not to. I saw God as cold, distant, not really caring about the real and painful things going on in my life.

I look back on those days, those months, those years and I cringe because I now know that God was mourning with me in my loss. It wasn't just my loss, it was His loss too. A dear friend, who also experienced a significant loss told me that she didn't blame God, wasn't angry with Him because she knew that God was mourning with her. That this sort of thing, death and disease and suffering, was not how He had intended it. But because of sin, death is now a part of life and God grieves with us when these tragedies occur. I will never ever forget her words because her view of God, her love for Him and her understanding of His love for her completely changed my life. And I started to see this truth that she spoke in my own life.

Having this understanding doesn't change the hurt. It doesn't really ease the pain. But it totally changed my reaction to what happened, and it completely transformed my prayer going forward.
The loss was devastating. I still feel the pain. My hurt will never completely go away.

But the one thing that changed for me was my prayer afterward. I prayed for redemption through this loss. I didn't know what that meant and I didn't know what that would look like. But that was and has been my prayer since that awful day in September.

And God answered my prayer in two very specific ways. The first was through my story. I wrote a blog about my experience and I prayed that somehow, someway, God would use my words to speak to people. I'm not the only one that has experienced this or any kind of grief and suffering in life. And I prayed that my words and thoughts would resonate with someone, anyone, and it would be a positive thing in their life. Friends, God answered that prayer in a tremendous way. So many women reached out to me and thanked me for sharing my story because they had also suffered in that way, and it was, in a weird sort of way, refreshing to hear someone sharing their painful story of loss too.
For some reason, miscarriage has been a taboo subject and many women carry this secret grief around, never letting anyone know that their lives are crumbling and they are deeply mourning.

It was hard to write my story, hard to share my grief with so many. But God redeemed that aspect of this loss, and I clearly saw His hand working through it.

The second way God redeemed our loss is even more crazy and amazing and awesome! There aren't enough adjectives to describe it!

Satan has a way of messing with us and making us believe his lies. The lies that he was feeding me were that God wouldn't give me another baby because I wasn't a good enough mom for the three that I already had, and the other lie was that I wouldn't be able to get pregnant again (and why should I whine and complain about that anyway, when God had already blessed me with 3 healthy kids?!).
I honestly fell into his trap and believed I wouldn't be able to get pregnant again. For several months we tried, and each month I was devastated when no little plus sign emerged.

But God continued to speak His truth to me, and His Word continued to spring up. Mark 5:36 says "Don't be afraid, just believe". And I have clung to that verse, not knowing what God had in store for our lives.

And here is the crazy, amazing, funny, awesome God we serve: We are pregnant right now, and this baby is due on September 23rd, the day that we lost our baby last year! If that is not a redemption story that ONLY GOD could orchestrate, I don't know what is!

Every single time I think about this crazy journey and God's amazing redemption story that is specifically for me in my life at this time, I cry. I just cry because He DOES care. All those years I thought He didn't care about the little things, didn't care about the things I was going through personally. It's just that I couldn't, or chose not to, see it. And here, right now in all of this, He is showing little ol me that He does indeed care.

Friends, He loves so deeply, cares so compassionately, pursues so intently. We only have to be accepting and allow Him to show us.

What it's really like living on support

One of the hardest parts for me about being a missionary is raising our own support. We took a course on Partnership Development and we learned all about why it’s okay to ask for support, why it’s necessary and even beneficial for those giving. We learned that it’s Biblical and how to do it well. We also learned that it should be comfortable and a blessing to all those involved.

We learned so much about raising support. The only problem…I still feel so awkward. Nothing stuck for me. I didn’t suddenly get comfortable doing it. I didn’t suddenly feel great about it. The idea of support raising, asking individuals and churches to support us and our ministry financially still makes my palms sweat, makes my stomach turn and makes me feel so awkward.

I’ve often told Phillip that I wish we could make our own money. Maybe get part time jobs and support ourselves. That way we could buy whatever we wanted and not feel guilty about doing certain things with our income because it was given to us. I feel uncomfortable eating out, going to Starbucks, taking the kids to the zoo. I always think “would our supporters be upset that I’m using their money for this?”. I know that it sounds silly, but when we are paid by individuals and not necessarily an organization I really start to think about what we’re doing with this money and what other people would think about it.

It’s stressful sometimes too. Living on support. To be completely honest, there are times that we don’t know if we’ll have enough money to make it through the month. Sometimes people forget. It’s normal. I’ve forgotten to pay a bill before. And if it’s not coming out of our account automatically, I have to put up reminders to pay things. Life gets busy. People forget.

Sometimes people have to stop supporting us for whatever reason. We get it. It’s not personal. But it also means that we have to figure out how to raise that extra money.

You see….for me, living on support is difficult. It can be awkward, it can be uncomfortable and we have to constantly do it.

But here’s the flip side. Here’s what makes it all worth it (for me anyway):

Living on support is living on faith. We have to trust God for EVERYTHING! I cannot tell you how many times we have been on our knees asking God to come through on our behalf because the support just wasn’t there. And it’s crazy you guys, just absolutely crazy because God does come through. Every. Single. Time. He comes through. He’s a miracle worker!

About a week or so after we miscarried I was feeling pretty crappy. Not only was I mourning this incredible loss, but we were cutting it very close in the finance department. I was growing increasingly agitated and grumbling at God about how we’re supposed to be doing His work yada yada yada, and He’s not even there for us. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. I was mad at God for not providing and for allowing us to live this uncomfortable life.

Seemingly out of nowhere, I got a card from a girl in my Bible study expressing her sorrow about our loss, but also exclaiming that God laid it on her heart to give us this money. The money was just the amount we needed! God is faithful. But He’s more than too. Yes, He faithfully provided the money that we needed, but He also provided some measure of comfort that I was longing for.

A few weeks before Christmas we decided that we would drive back “home” to visit with family and pick up some welcome baskets a supporting church made for refugees coming into our area. We were hesitant to make the decision to go because we just didn’t have the money. Like…we did not have the money. At all! But we knew we needed to go because we had to get those welcome baskets back here somehow, AND my dad told us he wanted to buy us a new vehicle! And so we prayed! We told God our needs, asked Him to somehow provide for us and thanked Him for His continual provisions. And we set out for the Midwest.

I kid you not, within the first 2 days of our trip we received $1000 from various people. One thousand dollars! Is that not insane?! We were blown away. Even now as I am writing this, I’m getting all choked up thinking about how God prompted several different people to give of their hard earned cash. He cares! And He provides.

These stories are not unique to us.

It’s funny though because I continue to worry and stress when bills come in and there isn’t enough in our bank account to cover everything. I still get nervous when a supporter doesn’t give one month or when checks come in late. I still sometimes doubt that God will come through this time, for whatever reason.It’s living on faith. Constantly, every day.

Often Phillip and I will discuss whether or not we should get jobs outside of the ministry, to help offset some of our costs, to pay off our student loans, to save some extra money. These conversations usually take place when we are smack in the middle of money stress. It seems that within moments of these conversations (that may be slightly exaggerating. Maybe hours or days) God provides for our needs in very specific ways. And then we say “Well, I guess He wants us to just keep doing what we’re doing?!”

Living on support is a love hate relationship for me. I still don’t always enjoy it, I still feel awkward sometimes. But I love that it causes me to have to trust God completely. I love that I have to rely on Him, that I get to pray about specific things all the time. And I love the ways in which He provides. It’s always different, it’s always amazing.

And really, I love having a connection with our supporters. I have such amazing feelings towards them. I’m humbled all the time by their generosity, by their love and support. More than most people, my heart goes out to them. I think about them and pray for them often because they are allowing us to do this work among refugees without the added worry of working a traditional job to afford it. 

We are certainly blessed.