Ten Years

I don’t want it to be ten years since I last hugged my second born daughter, kissed her goodnight, heard her infectious laugh or enjoyed her companionship. I feel her absence continually. I can’t help but wonder what she would have looked like now, where would she be working, would she be married and would she maybe have become a mum?

Shortly after Leah died I purchased a new daily devotional book called “The One Year Book of Hope” by Nancy Guthrie. Since then I was blessed to hear Nancy speak at the Irish Women’s Convention in Belfast in 2015.

Nancy has buried two of her three children. Her Bible teaching speaks deep into my broken heart. This year I’m reading through this daily devotional again, as I reflect on ten years of missing Leah.

Something Nancy wrote on Day 5 really resonates with me:

“Sometimes I feel guilty about my grief. Not because I think there is something wrong or unspiritual about recognising my loss and valuing my loss. I feel guilty because sometimes I think my grief is more about me than about Hope or Gabriel (Nancy’s two children who died). I feel sad not just when I think about them and their difficult, limited lives, but when the mental snapshots remind me of the pain I felt, the fear I felt, the disappointment that swallowed me.”

Nancy Guthrie

This passage totally makes sense to me; this is my grief, my sadness, my loss, along with the grief, sadness and loss of all who knew and loved Leah. However Leah isn’t sad or grieving or suffering, she’s in an infinitely better place, a place described in the Bible as follows:

‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”

Revelation 21:4-5

Leah is safe now, no harm can ever befall her. She has gone before us and I will see her again, but sometimes it’s just hard to wrap my head around all of this.

Recently I was reading John Piper’s Daily Devotional “Solid Joys” . He quotes Acts 14:22 “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” Piper goes on to explain “God often blesses us with a ‘grace given’ in the circle of ‘grace denied’.” He then says “We should not be surprised that God gives us wonderful graces in the midst of suffering that we had asked him to spare us. He knows best how to apportion his grace for our good and for his glory.”

What John Piper says is so very true: God doesn’t always give us what we ask of Him (grace denied) but in the midst of our struggles and disappointments we experience His ‘grace given’ and we can truly say that ‘He meets all of our needs”