Just three perhaps four short weeks ago I was snarled into the endless dark pool of despair.  Its cold water confinements seemed to snake around my frail emotional body.  A forlorn spirit.  A spirit of despair.  A weeping spirit.  A desperate spirit.  A broken spirit.  A spirit of hopelessness.  The end not in sight.  Just this endless dark pool that seemed to swirl around me and keep me confined to its emotional jail.  I did not know how to get away from this darkness.  Away from this deep pain.  I did not know how to keep breathing.  The lion’s angry snarl kept me rooted to the darkness of the pool where my crumpled body laid in a bath of mud as I wept bitterly over my son’s death.  I wanted to get out, I wanted to find my happiness again.  I wanted an escape from this horrible bottomless pit.  But there was no such thing as an escape route.  A 911 phone to say help get me out of here. Oh no, why would there be.  Or… so I thought…. My 911 call was to God one day, when I realized that I no longer wanted to live in bitterness, anger, frustration and despair.

I slowly realized that I did not want to live a life of bitterness. I was at a stage in life where I felt like the entire world hated me.  That the people from my church disliked me intensely.  That I was not worthy of anything (and truthfully, I am not worthy to be God’s daughter and yet God loves me).  I realized that I needed to change my attitude.  That I needed to change and that what people think of me is not of importance but what God thinks of me is of utmost importance? I was having long conversations with a friend at work who also lost a child but 12 years previously.  I asked her – how did you do it?  How did you change your attitude and became the happy person you are now.  Her response and motto to life is ‘All you need is love.  If you change your attitude and stop focusing on yourself and the whys, and what ifs then you are on the path of enlightenment’.  Though I like how she focuses on life – I know for a fact that the only true way to live life to the fullest is to allow God to come into your heart.  To allow God to restore you to complete healing.  To allow God’s love to seep through your hardened walls.  And in order to do this you do need to change your attitude in life and face the cross, where you can lay your burdens down, and where you can lay your emotions bare and naked in front of the cross as you cry out to God, my Saviour and my Lord.

The bitterness in my heart was still there, the anger, the frustration of life in general was still there and then I went along to this concert, and I was given a chance to see the pain of one person and how his years in the wilderness transformed his life.  His whole attitude changed.  He became increasingly focused on the cross, and pouring out his very heart to God, and now through his music is touching hundreds of thousands of people.  Isn’t that amazing?  Amazing grace has definitely occurred here!  And that is what I want for my life!  I want to be able to touch people with my testimony as he has touched me.  Influence and impact.  Influence and impact.  Influence and impact are echoing through my mind.  You have more influence and impact than you think Hannah.

I went for my early morning run this morning.  It was refreshing, exhilarating, freeing, energizing and so much more.  I was so full of peace that I could have skipped down the road if I wasn’t running! I felt free for a change.  I felt alive.  I felt like I was walking on water.  I ran between the houses still in deep sleep, passed the canal towards the lake, and sat at the water’s edge just staring at God’s beauty.  God’s creation.  God’s amazing creation.  I was in awe.  I could feel God’s very presence with me this morning, and a peace like no other peace transcended my body as I prayed for direction in my life.  I know that wherever my life will take me, wherever that may be – I won’t be living where I am living forever.  God has an amazing plan for me.  He has a plan for me.  He has already got the story of my life prepared and the simple rule is: You just have to trust in the Lord.  So I am trusting Him, I am loving Him, I am giving Him my all.  I am surrendering myself to his will so that I may glorify his kingdom and not my kingdom.

When my little boy died nearly nineteen months ago, I remember how my world came crashing down on me.  I laid in a puddle of despair and I cried bitter tears of regret, cried tears of anger, and loss, cried for my son whom I loved so very much.  I questioned why.  If I remember correctly, there were countless of times in the past nineteen months where I was on the verge of giving up on my faith, and walking away from God.  There I was a hopeless piece of cardboard ready to just give up and turn away from everything that was engrained into my spirit from my early teenage years.  Yes, I love my child, yes, I miss my child, yes, honestly sometimes or almost all the time I think it is unfair that my child died, but I also know that it was done for the glory of God’s kingdom.  I also now have a deep peace within me.  I am fine if I do not have children in the future (something I have been thinking about since January).  I know I have lost three.  But I have made my peace with God about it.  I do not need children to give me happiness.  In fact I truly believe that if God wants me to have children He will provide in his right timing. But somehow, deep within my spirit I know that for now, for the coming years there will be no child walking beside me.

Perhaps my child will be a project that God wants me to do.  Perhaps it is the book I am writing.  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.  There is a lot of perhaps in my life.  But I know one thing for sure and that is I want to surrender my life to God and give him my all.  I want to give Him my life, in the same way that He gave his only son so that we may live.  I also know another thing and its definitely not a perhaps – God is love.  God is my saving grace.  God is indescribable, unattainable and so much more then I could ever describe in my weak words.

A couple years ago when I was pregnant with my son – God was doing some serious sifting in my life, and I had some pretty serious visions.  One of which was where I was standing in front of a crowd ministering to people and helping women like myself to get through what can seem like an endless dark tunnel with no escape route.  You just have to grit your teeth and bare it.  You have to hold onto the rollercoaster as it takes you along a free ride.  A ride you never even wanted to get on to.  Heck, if I had a choice or a bargain, I would have taken the first exit off so that I did not need to experience what I experienced.  But this is not my story.  It is God’s story.  God’s story.  Mine is just a small story within God’s big story.

Highlight of my week: is being able to spend time in the word of God, and being able to witness his beauty wherever I walked, ran, and was during the week.  I feel like I am getting to know God on a deeper level.  There is a peace.  Peace transcends beyond all understanding.  You can have joy even when you are going through fire.  God is with you, and always will be.  Be safe.