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.