It feels like yesterday.......

It still feels fresh and new, the ache and the pain that came along with the loss of a child. Its been nearly a year and a half since our son Everett died and we brought his identical twin brother Landon home without him, but it feels like just yesterday that we had to learn to cope in this new and unexpected life we were given.

A lot has happened from then to now, far too much to summarize, its been a real roller coaster of events and emotions that brought us from heart break to broken but healing. But, here we are, broken, but healing, coping and adapting and carrying on in a world that is forever lacking and makes no sense.

Losing Everett shook our world up like a snow globe, and nothing is as it was before, everything is changed, some things changed immediately while some changes took time, some changes hurt immensely while some happened without us noticing. None the less, we've been changed. The biggest and most noticeable change that we've underwent since losing Everett is in our faith, where we had superficial, maybe even artificial faith before, real, living, growing faith has now taken its place. It wasn't an easy change, or a painless change, but it has been a vital and exciting change, that has greatly helped me to cope with the daily struggle of losing one of my children.

So, it would seem that in losing Everett and feeling the deepest pain anyone can ever feel, I found God, or maybe, God found me. I am deeply comforted in knowing that God noticed our loss, and grieved our baby along side us, and was saddened at the end of Everett's much too short life. Matthew 10:29 says "But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it". Everett was a sparrow, fallen and noticed, and now we are like fallen sparrows too, fallen but noticed, this single verse can summarize how it was we came to faith. Because after the anger lifted (and there was so much anger at God) I was able to see that God knew, and understood, and noticed all of what happened to us, and that he cared, and was saddened too. Once God was no longer the enemy or someone I laid the blame on, I was able to accept comfort from him, comfort I desperately needed, and comforted I was, and am.

This blog cannot start at the start, too much has happened from then to now, so I'll start where I am right now, growing in faith, coping with loss, raising my children and watching God's plan for our lives unfold. I'm trying to be bolder and braver in my faith, until now I have been private about it, uncertain of how it will be received, but I'm trying to change that, change is what this blog is all about.

Katie