Remembering

This, is Reverend Carol Boschma.

The 8th of this month, would have been her 46th birthday.

I met her when I was just a teenager and I loved her. She was beautiful and funny and passionate.

She loved Jesus.

In 2005, we found out that she had a fist sized tumor in her brain.

My first day back to work after my honeymoon, on August 8th of 2006, I got the news that she died.

I went home from work and spent three hours digging up a huge weed in my lawn, weeping.

Carol was one of the first people I told about my eating disorder, she prayed for and supported me.

I could go on.

She was wonderful and I miss her.

I was at bible study last week, flipping through my bible to find the passage we were looking at and I fell upon a small piece of paper sticking out of the old testament.

I picked it up and recognized the writing immediately.

Carol.

Our youth group went to a conference when I was 14, God had given Carol a verse for me that she wrote on a small scrap of paper.

God has used that verse time and time again.

When I read it last week, it broke me and it reassured me.

"I will sprinkle clean water on your, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

Ezekiel 36:25-26

I've been struggling for the past few months with my dear Denay. I love her, so much.

After Paisley was born, I felt closer to her. I felt like it was her and me against the world (so to speak), raising Paisley together while daddy was at work. She was my comrade, my little helper and my partner.

As Paisley got older and more interactive I started finding harder and harder to relate to and plug in with Denay. Paisley is just SO easy....she just wants to be held, sat with, googled over and "played" with. I can just sit with her, play silly peek-a-boo games and blow raspberries on her tummy and squeeze her cheeks. I find her relaxing for the most part and the more that happened the more I found Denay exhausting. She loves to play her memory game or build mega-block towers or read or color or play dollhouse and I feel completely void of energy or desire to do any of those things with her. When Paisley is napping and I've got my arms free, all I have the strength to do is sit and each time she asks to play or needs help I get so inconvenienced and frustrated.....and I don't know why.

I've been completely wiped and drained physically. No matter how much sleep I feel like I'm getting I still have no get-up-and-go, no life. Each day I wake up and beg God to give me patience and love and grace and PEACE, but still wind up shooing my sweet big girl away so I can get stuff done or just sit.

Then I read that verse.

I was reminded that my Heaven Father never shoos me away.

He never gets angry with me and His mercy and grace are new every morning.

I was reassured that He is working in me, that He can heal and restore and transform.

That He can take this imbalance I feel, this transition I'm going through and this loss of connection and make it something beautiful.

I wasn't prepared to need to learn to shuffle between two completely different level of stimulation, and most days I feel like a total failure, but every moment I choose my children over what I think are my needs are, I see God's blessings poured out, my home happier and my life richer and I see God filling me with every ounce of everything I need to be the mommy my baby's need me to be.

Amazing, amazing grace.

How sweet the sound.