No Fooling

by Sarah

Today is April 1st... April Fool's Day. 

I've been spending a lot of time lately thinking about what God is doing in my life.  What is he showing me? What is the lesson he is wanting me to grab onto from this season?  Why did Luke have to die? Why did we have to go through loving and losing him? Why couldn't he be asleep in the next room? Why? I know some of these are questions we will never have answered to our satisfaction and understanding this side of heaven, but they still roll across my mind more frequently than I care to admit. Sometimes I feel like by even asking, I'm not living by faith...but maybe sometimes having faith is moving forward even though you are still asking the questions...just trusting that maybe someday there will be clarity.

I am working hard to open my heart to learn what God has for me in this experience....so I can be open for what is ahead. I want to allow myself to be transformed through this experience of loving and losing my sweet boy. I do not want to miss the forest for the trees.  I want my eyes to be open...I want my faith to be deepened...I desire to trust Him with everything I've got and live accordingly.  But actually living by faith is scary.  It is scary to close my eyes and continue forward not knowing where we are going while struggling with accepting where we've already been.  It is scary to believe him when he says his plans for me are good plans...even when they don't feel that way today.  It is just. plain. hard.  Especially when I feel like sometimes God is far away and is being very quiet when I need him to be his loudest and nearest.  Sometimes I feel like He's forgotten me.  Even though I know that is not true- in my head.  It still feels that way sometimes- in my heart.

So over the past few weeks, I've been trying to cling to and remember times where God was faithful to me in my life. There are many examples, and today happens to mark the anniversary of a couple big ones. (The irony of it being April Fool's Day is not lost on me!) I'm choosing to hold on tight to my memories of times when God brought me through impossible seasons and pits in my past, and when He answered prayers in ways beyond what I could have asked for or imagined.  I'm choosing to remember and thank Him for how he provided for me in ways I did not even know I needed, let alone knew to ask for.  He has been so very faithful to me over the years, and promises that he always will be...yet I sometimes easily forget that when I'm in the midst of a struggle or things do not seem to be working out the way I planned. 

I look all around me and there are buds sprouting on trees, the color green is popping everywhere I look, flowers pushing up from the ground, a thunderstorm is in the forecast, the sun is shining and breezes are blowing the clouds across the sky....spring is here.  Life is beginning afresh all around me. It is breathtaking to behold.  And I just miss Luke like crazy...wishing he was here so I could introduce him to this beautiful season. 

Today as I was driving and feeling extremely heavy hearted, I felt God whisper to me and remind me that he is the one who restores life where there was once death.  He is the one who brings beauty back in the most unexpected places.  He is the one.  He never forgets and He has not forgotten that I'm still waiting for spring to arrive in my heart.  Despite all of my tears today, I was encouraged by the reminder that someday soon in my heart, life will push its way back through, colors will return, and the view will be beautiful again....there will be spring.  He has not forgotten- and never will.  No fooling.