Before 40

In November I will hit a pretty big milestone in life. I turn 40. As I write that number, it seems impossible.  Where have the second have of my 30's gone? The first half I soaked up every ounce of NYC that I could!

Life has been unbelievably busy since I got married 5.5 years ago.  We've lived in five states, changed jobs, had two babies, spent almost nine months in the hospital with our youngest son, lost him to heart disease, then moved again to the Chicago area as we have been navigating loss and grief.

We also bought a lovely house and have finally found some great community through a local church.  We started the adoption journey officially about 18 months ago and we have been actively waiting for 13 of those months.

We have come super close to our forever baby three times now.  Pregnancy is no easy journey. I definitely didn't handle it well either time for different reasons. But, at least there is a due date where it comes to an end. With adoption, there are no due dates. You just WAIT and WAIT and WAIT. So, that is where we are now with our adoption journey. Waiting!

I am sure that many moms (and dads!) could say the same about their lives. Time flies by with all the big and little decisions to be made. Even if you've not moved several thousand times like us. Well, that's an exaggeration but not by much ;).

As I think about this big birthday that is lurking around the corner, it is a good time for me to take stock in a few areas of my life. I am thinking through a few goals I'd like to pursue during the next 70ish days before my bday.

Here are a few goals I have so far:

Run a 10K Race: this is something I did regularly in my old life in NYC but I haven't done a race beyond a 5k in a number of years. I'll start looking for one to do before my birthday.

NYC trip: this will likely have to have after the big bday. We have a reunion trip scheduled for December. Can't wait to see my friends and pretend I live on the upper west side for a long weekend!

Rebuild my blog or launch a new one: This goal deserves its own blog entry but I'll share that this has been on my mind for several months now. The more I grow as a writer/researcher the more I want to explore managing my own site. I plan to continue writing for the different blogs/editors that I currently write for weekly.  I have A LOT to learn for this to be what I hope for it to be but I'm going to jump soon. More details to come.

140's by 40: This goal could also take an entire blog entry...actually an entire book. My weight has gone up and down so many times.  I've struggled with extra pounds since childhood and I've obsessively taken it off several times. Sometimes I did it with eating very low calories and exercising nonstop. But, then I finally learned how to take care of myself and started running regularly. I will expound on this more too. Today I find myself where I've been many times. I am around 20 pounds heavier than I want to be. I am thankful that I'm not 75 pounds heavier like I have been in the past. I need to lose around 16ish pounds to be back in the 140's.  I feel pretty good and strong in the mid 140's.  It is going to take some self-control, a clear plan, accountability, and some good training to achieve this goal.

Adopt: Another goal...more of a dream because I can't control this one is to adopt before I'm 40. So, get to praying, people!

Grief Sets You Apart

I miss my son. My special, strong boy. The missing will never leave me. The place where he belongs in our family only gets larger as he would be getting older. I missed him terribly at Graham's birthday party. His little brother was so clearly absent that I could feel it with each breath that I took. 

I think that I will look for him each day of my life. Every family photo I will notice where he would be. Every meal, every holiday, every moment of my life, I look to the place made just for Hudson. On Graham's wedding day, we will have a missing groomsman. On my deathbed, I will be looking and seeing where he should be standing, next to his big brother, Graham. This hole will never leave me. I will always see and feel it.

Grief is longing and loving and aching. It washes over like a tidal wave that nearly drowns you. Grief changes everything. Everything. It has changed my capacity (everything requires more energy now), the way I see the world, the way I see God and prayer and church and worship. It has changed me. My heart has aged a lifetime.

I feel everything more deeply now. The good and the hard emotions. Joy is more palpable and genuine, and sorrow is felt down in my bones.  

We all carry grief in our hearts. A lost love. A lost dream. A lost marriage. A lost child. A lost parent. A lost sibling. A lost career.  A loss of health. A loss of identity.

Our grief sets us apart. It marks us. We are persevering in a fallen and broken world with battle scars. The danger I am facing is that grief wants to separate me.

Being set apart as a veteran of grief and loss is something that God can use. 

But, grief wants to whisper often and consistently, "No one understands, nor can they understand. You are alone in your sorrow. You are alone in your loss. You don't manage your grief like you should. You should hide. You should be ashamed. You should have more faith. God doesn't even understand you anymore. You are different now. They don't want to know this new you. This hurting you. Just pull away. Just hide. Just manage the tidal wave alone."

I am in the war now. Everything in me wants to retreat and be separated by my grief. Separated from people, family, my own heart, and certainly from this big God who loves me but confuses me.

My new prayer is that God would allow my grief to set me apart, battle scars and all. But, that I won't believe the lies and run away alone and be swallowed by the grief. Because, oh will it swallow you! 

I was reminded of this beautiful song last week and I just realized (after naming this post!) it has the phrase, "set me apart" right there in the lyrics. Lord, chase me down when grief drags me to loneliness, hopelessness, and deep sorrow. Don't let me isolate my heart from those who love me. Don't let my hardened, bruised heart push you away. Mold me, Lord. Make me like clay in your hands. I've been there before but now, I'm so wounded that my heart is hardened in the survival of grief. Soften me, Lord, and then use me again.

The Potter's Hand

Beautiful Lord, wonderful savior

I know for sure, all of my days are held in Your hands

Crafted into Your perfect plan

You gently call me, into Your presence

Guiding me by, Your Holy Spirit

Teach me, dear Lord,

To live all of my life through Your eyes

I'm captured by, Your Holy calling

Set me apart

I know You're drawing me to Yourself

Lead me, Lord, I pray

Take me, Mold me

Use me, Fill me

I give my life to the Potter's hands

Hold me, Guide me

Lead me, Walk beside me

I give my life to the Potter's hand

A Ministry I Never Wanted

When I was in college I spent many hours listening to talks and reading books about giving my all for Jesus. As I listened to seasoned missionaries like Helen Roseveare and passionate pastors like John Piper, I was challenged to consider my comfort zone and flee from it for fear of passivity in the urgent call of Christ. I was deeply in love with Jesus because He had pursued me for many years as ran with all my might away from my church upbringing. As my heart softened to Jesus in college, I began to desire to live a life that honored Him. I started considering where God would use me. I knew from scripture that many who followed Christ went to hard places and went through challenging times. My worldview was being shaped by legacies of Christian missionaries like Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I needed these challenges to my Americanized view of comfortable Christianity. 

I remember telling God in tears in my dorm room, “I will go anywhere you send me with whomever you choose.” I thought I was offering my whole heart and life. I thought I knew what a mission field looked like and I felt ready for this challenging call of Christ to take up my cross.

I would find myself thinking about the kinds of hard circumstances I might be called to at some point in my life. My limited view imagined that God might call me to live without air conditioning, far from my family, for the sake of The Gospel.

So, it was clear that I desperately needed the challenges of other spiritual giants to get out of my very limited comfort zone. I thought that my worldview had exploded to include the huts in a country without proper toilets. I thought a difficult calling was limited to ministry in the inner city or with a tribe in Africa. I can say with firsthand knowledge that ministry in both of those places is extremely difficult but once again, my scope of calling, ministry, and challenging was extremely narrow.

My view of calling and ministry has expanded with years of walking with Him. I have now seen that God often gives us ministry opportunities that we never asked for and certainly never wanted.

For example, when I approached my late twenties as a single, I thought, “For sure I’ll meet my husband soon. All my friends are married.” When my friends started having their second and third child I thought, “He must be on the horizon.”

But, that wasn’t the case. When my heart was broken at the age of 31 by a man I thought I would marry, God gave me a ministry I never wanted. What I wanted was to be married and raise children but God, in His sovereign goodness, gave me women with broken hearts to walk alongside, study scripture, and do our lives together.  He gave me opportunities to use the pain, rejection, and tears. My worldview about ministry opened again. Living many years of singleness and ministering out of that stage of life was incredibly rewarding but also vulnerable and painful. And, I certainly hadn’t asked for this season of prolonged singleness.

Fast forward a few years and God called me to a new mission field called the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. I never dreamed of spending nine months in a hospital with my very sick son. I remember holding him and thinking about that same hut in Africa that terrified me as a new Christian. I remember wishing to be in the hut far from the pain I was feeling seeing my son hurt. Once again, God gave me a ministry I never asked for or wanted. I can’t say I did this unwanted ministry well on most days for it was consuming emotionally and physically simply being a mom to a critically sick baby but I have a few select memories of God working through my presence in this unlikely mission field.

I held a mom as her son’s heart rate fell to zero and the code alarm sounded. I prayed for so many heart babies and families whom I would never had known without the calling to the heart unit. I prayed for my own son and sang songs to him about our big God. I told him of heaven and he was my ministry. I wouldn’t trade that previously unwanted mission field for the world, no matter how painful.

Now that we have lost our son, I find myself with a new ministry. Once again this is a ministry I did not want or ask for. I never wanted to be in the “I lost a child” club like the rest of its members. In the year since losing our son, people will reach out to me because they have a sick child, they have lost a child, or a close friend has lost a child. I don’t have magic words but I am honest, vulnerable, and cry real tears with them. I don’t try to suppress their pain with fluffy words or put a quick band-aid on it with a verse out of place. I simply hear their stories, share mine, and together we feebly try to see the hope only found in Jesus.

I’m guessing that God has given most of us ministries we never wanted. I can think of a few just amongst my friends.

Folks like the…

Foster parents who are offering their hearts to the unknown for the sake of the children.

Single women giving their everything for Christ and not settling for less than God’s best.

Teachers who bring in extra supplies and deeply love their students.

Nurses who do their very best even when they are bone tired.

Divorcees who choose to engage in church and love on others even when their lives have been torn apart.

Parents taking care of chronically sick children.

Pastors who come to your side during all the beautiful and horrific things life brings.

Families who are pursuing adoption after long battles with infertility and miscarriages.

While I still am unsure about this ministry with hurting families of child loss, I am honored that God would use my broken heart once again in the lives of others to bring glory for His namesake.

For all of you stepping into ministry moments that you never wanted, I am right there too and I see you. Most importantly God sees you and He’s equipped you, even if you never asked for it!

To God be the Glory

Hudson's Christmas Stocking 2017

As a way of honoring our son, Hudson’s fight of congenital heart disease, we are collecting gift cards of any amount to fill Hudson’s Christmas stocking.

On Christmas day, families with hospitalized children will receive the gift cards from Hudson’s Stocking with a note about Hudson’s strong fight.

We hope to send at least 50 gift cards from Hudson!

To join efforts with us, you can mail a gift card* of any amount to:

Hudson’s Christmas Stocking

PO Box 1192

Kannapolis, NC 28082

*Gift cards for any store are great but here are some suggestions: Starbucks, Amazon, Walmart, Target, Jimmy Johns, Itunes

You can also give here: https://www.gofundme.com/havehalfaheart

Thank you for being part of Hudson's Heart!