Welcome to my blog!!

I am so glad that you decided to read my blog. Check back from time to time as I will be changing and updating it. It is still a work in progress and I am definitely new at this. With that said I hope you enjoy reading about my family. I would like to use this blog to keep everyone updated on what is going on with us also share stories. Please visit the Sharing Memories page to add your memories and stories of us and our time with Eli. I put a more detailed explanation on that page, but I would love to hear anything that anyone could share with us. That is a huge part of why I created this blog. I want to document every memory and experience we had with him. I want to hear some other points of view, and hear how he touched people lives.

For my first post I would like to share with you a story that I told in church during the communion meditation. It is a time where God showed Himself to me in a very clear and obvious way. I hope that it will encourage you to spend some time with God and think about a way that you can ask Him to show Himself to you. 

"After our son passed away in January I started reading a book called 'I Will Carry You' by a woman who also lost her baby. When I was reading it on Friday night I read a story about a time that she asked God to show her that her baby was with Him and the He was taking care of her. And He did, in a very obvious way.

I immediately stopped reading and prayed that God would show me a sign also. Even thought I know Eli is with him and I believe it, I just so desperately wanted an obvious sign. I wanted to really feel it. I wanted something to know that his short little life mattered. That it meant something.

By this time it was 1am and I was very tired, but I felt a nagging that I needed to read the first page in my new devotional book that I had bought the day before.This devotional was called 'Looking Up: Trusting God With Your Every Need'. It wasn't a book about loss or grief; I just felt the need to read something uplifting and positive. So I read the first devotional and the Bible passage it told me to turn to was Psalm 139: 13-16 which says:

' You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and kint me together in my mother's womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous-how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was being woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.'

I immediately burst into joyful tears. I knew this was God answering my prayer; letting me know that He had heard me. Telling me my son was His from the begining and that he was with Him. Eli means something to God and He clearly wanted me to know.

Sometimes when we pray for something we feel like God doesn't hear us or sometimes the answer is just no. I felt that when our son died and we prayed so hard, as so many of you did, that he would live.

But I am here today to tell you that my God is the same God today as He was when I praised Him the day Eli was born. He is the same no matter what. It's our circumstances that change, not God. I truly believe that if we just sit and spend some time with God and we listen for what He is saying to us and keep and open mind and heart; that He will reveal Himself to us, no matter what situation you are in. Sometimes the answer is yes, and it is so exciting to see when you know God is directly answering you. You just have to listen for it."

I hope you enjoyed my first post. There will be many more to follow. So stay tuned!

Psalm 119: 114 "You are my refuge and my shield; and your word is my source of hope."


Brooke