How I lost my voice…and then got it back again

Hey friends, it’s been awhile. This year has been full of lots of changes and transitions, trials and pain, and for a while there I lost my voice.

I was still walking around talking to people in my outside voice, but inside there was silence. Usually there’s this story telling voice inside of me that processes through every blog I write… if I’m gonna be honest, it’s not just blogs, it’s in there helping me process everything. For days, or weeks sometimes, I just kind of tell the story to you guys in my mind until I have clear what it is I want to write out.

When the voice went silent, I don’t know if it’s that my mind was busy adjusting, processing, healing, surviving, and my voice got lost in the midst of all of that. Or, if when things got very real, and hard, and painful the voice ran away, but either way…it was gone.

It started with wanting to write and just not being able to put words to things, and then it felt like I’d been away so long that to share was awkward, and then finally it transitioned into a complacent acceptance of the silence.

Until this past Sunday…

A friend casually encouraged me to write again while having a passionate discussion about french-fries. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but with his words the voice had stirred inside of me.

I’ve been thinking about you all a lot since then; what you’d like to read and what I’d like to share. Then the voice started telling stories again, stories about how terrifying grocery stores are, and what it’s like renovating my home with my dad, and French fries!

But the first story is a special one; it’s all about my birthday. It’s the epic tale of a girl who spent her life fighting for her December birthday to be something special…and how it is now one of the most important and special days in her story.

Coming at you next Thursday…my birthday!

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Stuck on Saturday

Last week was a hard one for me! I came up against something I wasn’t prepared for, a sudden grief that caught me by surprise and affected me in ways I wasn’t really prepared for.

As I sat in Good Friday service feeling the pain of my own grief, my heart began to understand in new and deeper ways the good in Good Friday, I began to learn a lesson about hope.

What sadness the disciples must have felt, what overwhelming grief Mary had to have experienced as she watched her son upon that cross. But we call it good, because that is what came of it, the goodest good…there ever was…but that Friday…I am confident…it did not feel good.

How awful that Saturday must have been. How painful. How confusing. To think of Mary, who KNEW Jesus was the Messiah. More than anyone else she knew He was the one. Not because of His miracles, not because of His teachings, but because she had been told by an ANGEL.

She had carried him in her womb…yet had done nothing to conceive Him. She raised several children, so she knew how sinful they are…but she watched Him grow up sinless. She knew He was the promised one, she had received a promise, lived it out, seen in so many ways how He was so different…but He had died, she had buried Him.

WHAT? That wasn’t supposed to happen! This wasn’t the way it was suppose to go! This was not what she was promised!

Had God finally given up on them? Had His patience run out? Had His love for His people dried up?

Maybe that’s not what Mary was thinking, but I’m pretty sure it’s what I would have thought.

Honestly, those are the kind of thoughts trying to overwhelm my mind right now. The thoughts that creep in when pain runs deep, when promises seem to be broken, and when what’s happened just doesn’t make sense…when you’re stuck on Saturday. 

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That’s where I am right now…stuck on Saturday. I’m in this place of grief, of pain…of sadness…and my mind is fighting the battle to keep from getting lost in the whys and my heart simply feels too weak to hope.

But…oh how I love when there’s a but…on Sunday the world changed! That glorious Sunday death was conquered, the table was turned on the fate of the souls of men, and hope burst forth victorious.

Saturday was a day that felt so hopeless…but that was not the truth. In fact, the world was pregnant with hope that Saturday. And it wasn’t because the disciples or Mary or anyone else had this great abundance of hope…it says they all left and just went back to life…but in spite of their lack of hope, hope broke through!

I received two beautiful reminders this week before and then after pain came for a visit…

All I need is a tiny bit of courage and He will strengthen my heart!

Hope is not something I need to feel or conjure up. It lives in my heart and remains even when I don’t have the strength to grab hold of it.

I may be stuck on Saturday right now…living in the place between sorrow and joy…but I know true Hope, Hope that does not disappoint, Hope that is more faithful than the morning and in Him my heart takes comfort and finds peace.

Mary didn’t get stuck on Saturday…and neither will I.