On Heritage & Grace

I've always loved writing.From an early age of writing "books" and stories, complete with illustration, to the years of English papers or Creative Writing assignments, and journals upon journals filled up with prayers and lessons learned through college and mission trips and life itself, writing has been a joy for me and a way that I tend to process life.When we first received Jacob's diagnosis, I quickly started a blog to share updates with family and friends and also to have a space for me to process and share what God was doing in my heart as we walked through the road ahead filled with joy and grief, celebration and sorrow.  That space became a home for me, so to speak, as I would spend nights on the couch or in my bed with thoughts swirling and a heart dull only to understand myself and my journey better as I got words on a page.  There was something beautiful about allowing words to flow that brought healing to my soul and perspective to mind as God taught me through the words I would write and rewrite and delete and publish.  There are dozens of drafts that are thoughts that began with words and ended with tears.  I'm thankful for all of them.Along the way I've had the opportunity to meet others and share Jacob with others who I would never have met, and who he would never have met, before.  What started as simply a way to update others became a place of solace and community for me. Prayers prayed and answered by essentially strangers.  Stories I've been invited into because others were invited into mine.  It's been a beautiful place of refuge and a place to declare God's goodness amidst the heartache of life.  I'm humbled and honored by how God would allow me to be part of others' stories, and how others have wanted to be a part of Jacob's.As my grief has shifted and morphed and changed and become more beautiful over time (more on that in a future post), and as we added another baby to our family in Heaven, I began to feel as though the space that I had created for and with Jacob in mind, although a special space for me, was a part of something greater that God had prepared for me.  I found myself wanting to write more about other things God was teaching me, and other ways in which I was experiencing the Lord in fresh circumstances that at times overlapped with Jacob's story, but at times were themselves separated.  And that space that was created for Jacob's story felt sacred to me, a place created for a purpose.  I didn't want to crowd it with my other thoughts on other things.  I needed a broader scope.Yes, I wanted to continue to write and process life and Jacob and grief and our miscarriage and all that God has brought me through and continues to do in me since that day in August of 2015.  But I wondered what other twists and turns God might take me through as I continued to grow and learn and pray through life in its good times and its hard times.And so, this new space was born.Heritage & Grace are two words that kept coming to my mind as I would consider all that God was teaching me.Heritage // a word that means inheritance, especially in terms of a property, or in the Bible refers to God's allotted portion or a special or individual possession, like Israel. In Jacob's life and death I was drawn to Psalm 16 as the psalmist cries out, "the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance" - and the imagery and consideration of what is the inheritance that God gives to his people has been so transformational to me.  It isn't in things or in what the world would say is good, but it's in Him and His presence... the inheritance that is beautiful regardless.  Through the joys and the aches of having my beautiful son only to say goodbye seven hours later reminds me of that.  And Jacob is basking in his inheritance in Heaven as I trust that God is graciously lavishing that upon him.Grace // the biggest component of God's character that I've had to wrestle with and embrace and live in and believe over the past several years, if not forever.  My eyes have been opened to the grace of God in my life and in this world through Jacob's life, and through our miscarriage, and I'm drawn to wanting to know God more because of it.  This free and unmerited favor of God, grace, has shaped me as a person as I've come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, but also as I've learned to walk the road before me that I so often wish I could trade in for a "better" one.  I imagine that wrestling with grace is something that I will do for years to come as I continue to understand the brokenness of this world, including in my own heart, and as I long for the good of what still is yet to come.  I think of Jesus, as John says, who is grace upon grace, and I cannot imagine something sweeter to my soul than learning it more.I imagine I will continue to write about Jacob and grief and hope after loss.  I imagine that I will continue to share more about what it meant to lose a second baby to miscarriage following our first.  I imagine that I will continue to use this space primarily for my own desire to process and my hopes to let others in on what God is teaching me.  I don't know which roads God will continue to lead me down as I continue to follow Him, but I also imagine processing and writing through them in this space.My dream and prayer for this space is that it would be one that points to Jesus, time and time again.  That the hope and grace spoken through the reality of sharing honestly about life would be a beautiful fragrance to those who enter this space with me -- and that no matter in what situation you find yourself, you'd feel freedom to rest in God's grace and heritage for you.  I want to know your story as I continue to share mine and I'm trusting that God would meet us where we are.So here's to a place of wrestling, a place of grace, a place of hope, and a breath of fresh air - where God might meet us and where our hearts are soft to hear from Him.  I look forward to the journey that will unfold here, to Heritage & Grace.