We Shall Always Be With the Lord...

So Comfort One Another With These Words

This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred
is torn from your life
And you survive...
This is what it is to be loved
and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We'd be held....

~Natalie Grant "Held"

Anyone who has experienced the loss of a loved one knows what it truly means to be torn between two worlds...our earthly existence and our Heavenly promise. If our lost loved one's were followers of Christ, we have the blessed hope of that Heavenly promise that one day we will all be with the Lord...and we are to comfort one another with those words.

One of my favorite songs we sing in church is Blessed Be the Name of the Lord...taken from the story in Job. Much controvery is spoken over this song, mostly in my opinion, by those who truly don't understand the passage of scripture. I heard a preacher once give a message on this passage and he said "The Lord gives and he NEVER takes away!" But that is in stark contrast to the Bible passage. "The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

I especially love the verse in the song, "every blessing you pour out, I'll turn back to praise."

This part of the song really made me search my heart in the midst of a grief season of losing 7 babies a few years back. The Lord specifically says that children are a gift from the Lord. They are an unmitigated gift. We do nothing to deserve them. They are gifts from His hand to our families. But what happens when that "gift" does not come like we expect it to? Is that precious life any less a gift? I WRESTLED long and hard over this!! How could losing a pregnancy, or having to bury a baby still be a blessing?

It was during these numerous losses that I had come to terms with the eternal.

It was not an easy process, but in the end, years later, I can look at each of those children that the Lord gave us, and know that their earthly purpose was complete (much to my heart ache) but the plan and purpose that God created them for, from the foundations of the world, was an eternal purpose.

I have 7 children in Heaven who are worshipping with the angels, and the Saints who have gone before us, daily crying out, "HOLY, HOLY, HOLY...is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come!" Now this may not come as no suprise to you, being that Brad is their father...this act of worshipping...I think it is genetic! But I had to come to grips with the fact that if children are a gift from God, they are gift, no matter what the outcome....so that song really ministered to me during those times of loss. I had to bow my knee before a Holy God and say YOUR WILL, NOT MINE!

In time I came to look at each child as a gift, regardless of their early departure...and in the process of a grieving heart I was able to cry out, "He gives and takes away...but my heart will choose to stay...BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD!"

So, why am I bringing all of this up now?? So many years after the fact??

This morning my pastor was teaching on healing and death and he referenced the verse from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

But we do not want you to be uninformed, bretheren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not
precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet with the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.

Therefore comfort one another with these words.

As pastor read those words, it occurred to me that the anniversary of my twins funeral just passed...and this year it almost slipped my mind. I have come a long way from being consumed with the grief. It is not that I have forgotten their precious lives...never will...but all I could think of today was just how COMFORTING those words really are, now that the grief is not so fresh.

My heart is torn between two worlds. To see the Lord face to face, and to worship Him along side of my children who have gone before me...really is comforting to my heart! But the desire to stay earthbound and married to Brad...and to watch my children grow and mature in their faith, to see them get married and have children of their own...well, that is comforting too!

My twins Jeremiah Daniel and Josiah David would be 5 years old...and though their arrival was not as we hoped, I praise God with a grateful heart for the short time that He blessed us with their presence.

For every blessing You pour out,

I'll turn back to praise!

Thank you Lord, for the time we had with them!

Love, Dawn

You can view my Twins Memorial Site at the following link:
http://www.blessedarrows.org/memorialservice.htm