Hello, Friends,
Thank you for loving us. Thank you for praying for us. Thank you for encouraging us and supporting us and blessing us with God's grace. I am humbled and deeply grateful by all you do on our behalf.
Did you know that I am not super-anything? I am not Supermom. I am not Superwoman. I am not Supergirl. I am blessed beyond measure by God's grace, and most of the time I feel happy and joyful and energetic and peaceful and content and filled with faith and grace. Sometimes I feel tired and weary and lonely and broken and empty and incapable and unable.
In the first month or so after DJ went to be with Jesus, my primary emotions were of relief that his suffering was ended and happiness that he is in the very presence of the LORD. Yahoo! What a blessing, what grace and hope belong to us!
In the past month or so, I have been more keenly aware of my emptiness. Particularly as it pertains to the parenting of our children and as noted by my LCSW, not only am I a single parent, I am the ONLY parent. And recently I have felt the gravity of the truth that I can never be DJ Bigelow, their father, for A, B and C. This highlights my sense of alone-ness and inability to meet their needs. There have been times in the recent past that I have felt broken, and without earthly resource, and totally depleted. I am grateful for the gift of faith in my heart, and that I have not given in to fear - I have walked to the edge and looked out over the possibilities of things that could cause fear to rise in my heart, but I do not camp there. I have a healthy habit of surrendering my heart to the LORD (and even this is a gift of God's grace); and of course, He is again granting me peace and hope in place of anxiety. But I have felt empty.
I am listening a lot this week to Kari Jobe's "I Am Not Alone", which brings comfort to my heart. "In the midst of deep sorrow, I see Your Light is breaking through. The dark of night will not overtake me, I am pressing in to You. LORD, You fight my every battle, and I will not fear. I am not alone, I am not alone, You will go before me, You will never leave me."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow4OfW4DP9s
Please know that for most of my hours, I am encouraged and happy and content and cheerful and peaceful. God has blessed me with many, many friends and with so much joy and happiness and good things. I am not overcome by sadness and sorrow and depression and despair. But I am not immune to the realities of life. And I guess that you appreciate the knowledge of what is in my heart. :-)
So - as you pray for me and my family, please pray specifically for Alexandra, Brookelow and Caedmon Van Bigelow. Please pray that the loss of their earthly father will drive them to know their Heavenly Father in profound, life-changing, beautiful, healing, comforting, redemptive ways. Please pray that their mother will be appropriately present and available to offer them comfort, and that she will be wise and loving and firm and patient and filled with the Holy Spirit, particularly as it pertains to her parenting of them. Please pray that the LORD will grant to Alex, Brooke and Caed exactly what they need, and that they will receive and experience from God what God gives to them.
I appreciate the last lines of "The Serenity Prayer", and I agree with it: everything will be alright, because we have Jesus:
"...trusting that You will make all things right if we surrender to Your will, so that we may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen."
Aaaaaa-men! Everything's going to be alright, of this I am confident.
Thank you for loving us! I am positively absolutely without-a-doubt certain that we are sustained and blessed and upheld and granted God's grace by your prayers. Thank you, thank you, thank you, one thousand times thank you!
