Flying Arrows

And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David. He shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. Isaiah 22:22 As my relationship with the Lord has grown, this is one that thing that the Lord has had to spend a lot of time teaching me: The LORD is in control of our paths.  He is the best planner, the best teacher, the best Father.  He's the best. Some of this learning has come with greater cost than others.  This is the story of a journey that God has gone on with us, that has had the greatest cost to our family. In 2017, we welcomed our fourth child to the world.  He was perfect in every way, and still is.  We had just moved to Kansas City, and were excited to put down new roots with a new community of believers.  We were convinced that our family was complete with this special little boy that was a complete surprise, and if we were ever to expand our family it would come down the road with foster care and adoption - something that Luke an

One of the things I love about the Word of God is how it's so multi-dimensional.  The stories shared in the Bible never have one meaning or application.  There's the immediate application...the future application...the parallel meaning...and so on and so forth. Take the story of the Israelites in the desert.  God was teaching them to trust Him for their immediate provision, right?  He wanted their hearts of obedience as they trusted Him for manna.  But there is so much more to that story when you look back at it as a historical account.  We can analyze the Israelites as a people, and God's ways as a Father.  We can appreciate the way the God pursues His children, disciplines us, and trains us in the ways He wants us to go.  So many dimensions!  Each time we read these stories, we find the blessing of learning more about Him and deepening our relationship with Him. That's what I wanted to demonstrate in the name of this child.  I wanted a name that resonated with a multi

My heart has not had the reaction that I expected from the overturning of Roe v. Wade.  It is full of heaviness and questions, but also resolve and hope.  I feel like my story gives me a bit of a different perspective on it all, and I've hesitated to share because I haven't felt I had the right words.  The thoughts I share here are still fresh and may not be complete, but I thought they were important to share. On February 16, 2019, I found out I was pregnant.  On April 25, 2019, I experienced a traumatic and life-threatening miscarriage.  We believed that the Lord had put having a new baby on our hearts, so we determined to follow Him on the journey to another baby.  In faith, we conceived again in July of 2019 and experienced another miscarriage in September.  In faith, we would conceive 4 more times and each pregnancy ended in miscarriage.  I had 2 emergency D&C's, 2 routine D&C's, and 1 D&E.  Each of these experiences brought crushing heartbreak and deep

 The battery in my wireless mouse ran out today. We're out of AA batteries in our house.  No problem, right?  I'll just use the touch pad on my laptop instead.  Right? Wrong. I asked my son to use the battery from the remote of his brand new RC Jeep, since the Jeep is already broken.  He can't find it. And all of the sudden, I'm spiraling. Homeschool converts into house cleaning.  Still no remote, and I'm crying.  All because of a powerless computer mouse. This morning for our history reading, we read about David's fearless act of killing Goliath of Gath. He had no fear because he knew his Defender.   David remembered the promise that God made to his people way back in the days of Joshua, and he knew it was still true. " The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still."  Exodus 14:14 NIV This promise has no expiration date.  God still promises to fight our battles for us today. Where is my faith????  How can my life feel so out of control over

 I thought I should take some time to walk you through some of my personal history as it relates to the subjects addressed in this blog.  Since this is a road I've been walking already for nearly 12 years, and I have very little of it documented in print, I want to start at the beginning. In 2006, Luke and I were married. The fact that he was in the military at the time brought a certain level of uncertainty to our immediate future (i.e. moves, deployments, jobs, supports), so we made the decision to wait to start a family.  I was 26 years old when we wed, and was already feeling the pressure of time in my heart.  Waiting for children after marriage was very difficult for me. 2007 marked the end of Luke's military service, and the beginning of a new freedom for the two of us.  Luke began pursuing what his professional future would become, we went on a long-awaited honeymoon, and we spent several months living in the town where we met enjoying the company of our close web of fri

 Most mornings, I wake up in a melancholy state.   Another day farther away from the last time I carried my last baby.  Another day closer to the due date of that baby, and consequently the due dates of close friends with whom I had hoped to walk through newborn days.  Now their bellies continue to swell, and my baby remains the size she was when she left this earth - before we ever got to meet her. That baby is accompanied by eight siblings in Heaven, and I long for the day that I will meet them.  Grieving for miscarried babies brings a unique heaviness that is hard to explain.  There are no memories to relive, no stories to retell, no beautiful epitaph to read.  It's the emptiness of what could have been, and what will never be.   It's a semi-colon, with nothing to complete the sentence. Solomon's words express it well: Hope deferred makes the heart sick... But now I'm finding myself in this place of topsy turvy feelings.  You see, I found out three weeks ago that I&#