Sing it!

For The Beauty Of The Earth

Verse 1

For the beauty of the earth
For the glory of the skies
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies

Chorus 

Lord of all to Thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise

Verse 2

For the beauty of each hour
Of the day and of the night
Hill and vale and tree and flower
Sun and moon and stars of light

Verse 3

For the joy of human love
Brother sister parent child
Friends on earth and friends above
For all gentle thoughts and mild

Verse 4

For Thy church that evermore
Lifteth holy hands above
Offering upon every shore
Her pure sacrifice of love

Verse 5

For Thyself best gift divine
To the world so freely given
For that great great love of Thine
Peace on earth and joy in heaven

Holy Spirit

Verse 1

There's nothing worth more that will ever come close
No thing can compare You're our living hope
Your Presence

Verse 2

I've tasted and seen of the sweetest of loves
Where my heart becomes free and my shame is undone
In Your Presence Lord

Chorus 

Holy Spirit You are welcome here
Come flood this place and fill the atmosphere
Your glory God is what our hearts long for
To be overcome by Your Presence Lord

Bridge

Let us become more aware of Your Presence
Let us experience the glory of Your goodness (Lord)

Life, Love, Loss & HOPE

2016 has been a year of beautiful surprises and there's still seven months left in this year of Jubilee, with all that God has done in the first five ... I can't even imagine what life will look in December.  But it doesn't come without a price, and I'm deeply reminded that the very gift of love that I have been given in the gift of Joe and our recent engagement have come as the result of great loss.  It was and is in the place of his greatest loss and grief that we get to share one of the greatest gifts of love that I have ever known.  

It came full circle this week when he agreed to make a hospital visit to Greenville NC with his pastor.  This is what he does, it's part of his calling, it's one of the incredible gifts he has been given as a pastor.  He gets to sit with and pray for those who are ill, those who are suffering as the result of an accident and speak truth and love in loss.  We were right in the middle of celebrating a final detail (via text message) as we prepare for marriage later this year when he said "We're on our way to Greenville to make a visit."  And then it hit me.  Today is the 26th, the day that he lost Erin, the day that changed his life forever and changed mine too.  And he's headed straight for the hospital where he last saw his beloved in this life.  Erin passed from this life to the next on June 26, 2015 from an amniotic embolism.  A tragic and devastating loss.  Each month on the 26th; I pause, re member and pray for him and the grief.  Grief and loss are a tricky thing, they show up unexpected, unannounced and some days unwelcome.  And even on days like today when we know it's coming ... its still not easy.  Especially when God leads you through your very calling to the same floor and past the very room where your life was and is changed forever.     

When Joe and I began dating in January, one of the first questions I asked him was "So tell me more about why you think you're ready to date after losing your wife and daughter last year?"  An honest question, he gave an honest answer.  Later he told me, "I wasn't quite sure what to do with that and then I thought, she's not afraid to ask the hard questions".  I'm thinking "Have you seen my hair and heard the sass?"  He explained how he had experienced a great deal of healing in the last several months and prayed for discernment from the Holy Spirit about how to honor Erin and move through the grief rather than push it aside.  I was and continue to be grateful for his honesty and vulnerability with me when it comes to this grief.  Some days it comes like waves for us both and is so overwhelming that I can't even speak.  Some days it's pausing to whisper a prayer, smile, cry and re member the gift we've been given because of the incredible loss of Erin and Abigail.  And remember ... there is HOPE.  Erin's middle name was HOPE and Abigail's too ... 

HOPE MISSIONS was born out of a trip to Honduras where Joe and Erin served side by side.  Erin, a trained RN was asked to check on a young boy who was "sick" when she pulled out her stethoscope to listen to his chest he pulled up his shirt and smiled.  He was indeed very ill and in need of breathing treatments.  Not an option for this young child who lived in a remote village in Honduras.  She shared the best ways to protect his lungs through the use of a t-shirt mask and encouraged him to get to a medical clinic as soon as possible.  In that moment her life was changed forever, and Joe's and mine.  Erin was answering a call from the Holy Spirit to use her passion and gifts for helping to heal the sick that would birth a nonprofit that will serve the globe with HOPE.  HOPE for the mind, HOPE for the body and most importantly HOPE for the soul.  

As Joe and I begin this journey together in 2016 we're grateful for HOPE and all it represents in our relationship.  For Re membering Erin and Abigail, for the passion for mission that we get to live out together through HOPE MISSIONS and for the HOPE that God is the great Recycler, Restorer and Redeemer of ALL THINGS.  It doesn't make the pain and loss of losing Erin and Abigail any less and it ought not.  May we never forget the gift of love that we have been given has come at such a high price.  (Isn't this the very gift of love that God gave when he sent his son Jesus to the world?)  I am convinced of it.  The picture below was taken on January 16th, 2016 at a restaurant in Colonial Williamsburg where we shared our first date.  Last Saturday evening unbeknownst to the wait staff they sat us in the very same booth after Joe asked me to be his wife ... It was magical!  A picture is worth a thousand words.  And two, well, you see.  

  

  
This quote inspired my first tattoo in 2005.  Who knew that eleven years later I'd be living it out in ways I never dreamed or imagined?  

"Beginnings are usually scary, endings are usually sad but it's what in the middle that matters that counts.  So, when you find yourself at the beginning, just give HOPE the chance to float up and it will." - From the film HOPE Floats.  

Uptick 2016 - Songs for Communion

Come Thou Fount 

Come, thou Fount of every blessing, 
tune my heart to sing thy grace; 
streams of mercy, never ceasing, 
call for songs of loudest praise. 
Teach me some melodious sonnet, 
sung by flaming tongues above. 
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it, 
mount of thy redeeming love. 

Here I raise mine Ebenezer; 
hither by thy help I'm come; 
and I hope, by thy good pleasure, 
safely to arrive at home. 
Jesus sought me when a stranger, 
wandering from the fold of God; 
he, to rescue me from danger, 
interposed his precious blood. 

O to grace how great a debtor 
daily I'm constrained to be! 
Let thy goodness, like a fetter, 
bind my wandering heart to thee. 
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, 
prone to leave the God I love; 
here's my heart, O take and seal it, 
seal it for thy courts above. 

I am bound for the kingdom 
Won't you come with me (repeat) 

Hallelujah we sing (repeat)

Sanctuary

Lord prepare me, to be a sanctuary
Pure and Holy, tried and true
With thanksgiving, I'll be a living 
Sanctuary for you

Holy Spirit

Holy Spirit, You are welcome here
Come flood this place and fill the atmosphere
Your glory, God, is what our hearts long for
To be overcome by Your presence, Lord
Your presence, Lord

There's nothing worth more
That could ever come close
No thing can compare
You're our living hope
Your presence, Lord
I've tasted and seen
Of the sweetest of loves
Where my heart becomes free
And my shame is undone
Your presence, Lord

Let us become more aware of Your presence
Let us experience the glory of Your goodness