A dependable Anchor.

Sorry I’ve haven’t blogged in three weeks or something like that…


My family said goodbye to Charlie a few weeks ago and it left me feeling like quite the bottled up little creature. Sometimes I struggle with the lines between 'healthily-internally-processing' and 'bottling-it-up', and since it kind of is one of those events that becomes over for everyone else but not over for you, I struggled with processing it.


I felt like if I couldn’t say something about Charlie then I couldn’t say anything at all. 


But after the court date, someone here let me read a couple chapters from her ‘Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World” book…(I don‘t think she knew it was going to be such a God-send or that I was not only going to read it, but write the whole chapter down, and then reread it 78 times)... 


Here is a portion of it:


“Because we live in this world, trapped in the old order of things, tragedy will touch our lives. That’s simply a fact for Christians and non-Christians alike. We will all lose loved ones. We will all eventually die. Romans 8:28 is often distorted to “only good things will happen to those who love God”. But Paul meant just the opposite. Romans 8:35-38...”Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?”


Trials are real. Bad things happen to good people and bad people alike. And we who are Christians don’t escape life. Pauls says, we overcome life….”No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”


This promise anchors our all too shaky world to His unshakeable Kingdom. 


For while life may shake, rattle, roll, this rock-solid truth from John 11:5 remains:
Jesus LOVED Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 


Love. That’s a dependable anchor.


The love of Christ has for you is a love you can cling to, for it will hold you. Though we may not understand God’s methods, that doesn’t change the fact of God’s love.


God’s plan is released when we believe and obey.”


I entered our names into that verse...Jesus LOVED the Stringers and their little boy, Charlie.
...So like Abraham, who “against all hope, in hope believed” Romans 4:18...(which is a lot how it feels), we choose to believe God. That He has heard our hearts and this is the BEGINNING of His radical plan of using this little boy's life to glorify Himself, not the end.


Please keep praying.
For God’s continued protection on Charlie’s heart and mind in an unstable and worldly home.
For our family and that we will be allowed the opportunity to see Charlie.
That the eyes and heart of Charlie's dad will be opened to encounter our Savior.