Quick update…yes, we are alive and recovering well.  It is painful and I would like to skip this part and go straight to feeling ‘normal’ (if I remember what that is).  But it is a process and we will get there and we will look back remembering the time when…

But for now, let’s REWIND…

So before the whole baby/surgery thing happened, I decided that I needed to read the book of lamentations…because that’s what I felt like doing…lamenting.  And I did quite often, flat complain how I didn’t want to go through this.

After reading the first two chapters of lamentations, I discovered its just a lot of yucky stuff.  Basically, it goes on and on and on about the affliction of God’s people because of their own bad choices.  And then chapter 3 begins with the author’s own feelings of affliction and the sense of God’s abandonment.  It goes on for 19 verses, lamenting about the current situation Jeremiah finds himself in…and none of it sounds pleasing.  If you have ever found yourself in a situation or situations that just kept getting worse and there seemed to be no relief in sight…it would kind of be like what Jeremiah is writing about.  And that’s what I was feeling like, not quite the hardships of that time, just a small mountain I knew I had to climb, but I just didn’t want to even look at that mountain, let alone begin the climb.  I would rather sit and sulk at the bottom and cry out my ‘woe is me’ to anyone listening.

And then there is verse 20…

My soul still remembers
And sinks within me.
This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.

So beautiful…My Soul Still Remembers.  Yes, Lord, I remember.  In the midst of the chaos, fear, anxiety, questions, pain, grief, stress, and sin…I stop…I remember, YOU, and Your goodness and mercy and peace…it all sinks within me… and I can recall it to my mind…and there is my HOPE.  Wherever I am, whatever I may be going through or headed towards…My Soul Still Remembers…and therefore I have HOPE.

My pains and frustrations, fears and doubts, bad choices…they don’t define me…It is when I stop and remember and let Your great wisdom/peace/mercy/comfort shower me, soak into me and recall to mind and choose Your HOPE.

Father,

You are so generous in all Your ways.  My great comforter and protector.  You know what I need long before I even get there.  Help me to stop and recall Your ways, to allow the wisdom and love You have given me to sink within my soul so that my life would be a constant ray of Your HOPE.  I love You.

Lamentations 3: 20-27

²⁰ My soul still remembers And sinks within me. ²¹ This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope.

²² Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. ²³ They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. ²⁴ “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I hope in Him!”

²⁵ The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, To the soul who seeks Him. ²⁶ It is good that one should hope and wait quietly For the salvation of the Lord. ²⁷ It is good for a man to bear The yoke in his youth.