Ramblings of Lindy

Below is the post from Carter's webstie. I promise soon the blog will get back to fun things we are doing as a family...but for now we take a moment to grieve...

Thursday, March 20, 2008 10:38 PM
Dear ones,I wanted to take a moment and let you know that Carter is maybe a little better. He has had longer stints off of the oxygen. Today was the longest...he is resting peacefully right now without it. He played very hard today with his buddy Benjamin...I think you can call it playing...they coexisted until the other one started bossing the other one around...I wanted to clear up some confusion. Anyone who wants to join us is welcome tomorrow as we lay precious Andrew's earthly body to rest. It is closed casket and all services will be at the graveside. Bo and I realize that this is all for the praise and glory of God and that Andrew is more than just ours. Never would we close ourselves off...we learned that life is larger than we realize almost 4 years ago when Carter Mac was born.If you wanted an update on us you just received it. From here on down are things that I feel pressed to share.I have been promising an update from me on things God is doing in my life for a few weeks now. Feb. 28th is the date to be exact since I promised. I read something in my quiet time with God that touched me deeply and so related to the things we go through with Carter. Little did I know how true those things would be even on a day like today or a day one week ago or better yet, a day like tomorrow. "Why am I so depressed? Why this turmoil within me? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise Him, my Savior and my God" Psalm 42:5"Then I will come to the altar of God, to God, my greatest joy. I will praise You with the lyre, God, my God." Psalm 43:4I often pick up a book by David Nasser titled "Glory Revealed." I have picked this book up on and off since Fall of last year when we were in Nashville for the second time.The book is about different times/ways in our lives where God's Glory is revealed. There have been several that have touched me deeply...but the one from late Feb. is "Glory Revealed through Declaration."David says, "I often love to start a worship service by getting people on their feet and asking them to shout out specific attributes of God. I say, 'What has God been to you? Who has he revealed himself to be?' But most importantly, I ask them, 'Who do you need him to be?' I do this because there is much power in declaration. Power in rehearsing the things you may not feel at the moment but you know are true. It's because simply saying out loud the things you need to hear goes a long way in preparing the spirit for things to be that way. It's the power of the tongue. Psalm 42 is most famous for, 'As a deer longs for streams of water, so I long for You, God.' But it goes on to say, 'My tears have been my food day and night, while all day long people say to me, "Where is your God?"' (v.3). Not the content of your average worship song.Most psalms are songs of lament and honesty, but we don't hear about those too often. The ones written from the mountaintops of life tend to win popularity contest. But some of the most useful truths are in the psalms written from the valleys. Lament is a powerful tool that God uses to draw us nearer to him. A while back Michael Card gave an interview in Christianity Today that really struck me. The whole interview was about sorrow, lament, and suffering - not something we read about a whole lot. A series of events led Michael to a season in his life pondering the mystery of suffering and what God's role was in it. He came to the conclusion that we can't understand God's worth without experiencing woundedness. God's worth is found in the desert, not in the picnic grounds.Michael tells a story of a pastor friend who was paralyzed in an auto accident while out on a pastoral call. There was no obvious rhyme or reason to the tragedy - it just happened. When his friend began to cry out to God and experience his prescience, his cries changed. 'You don't have to heal me. Just don't leave me!' His friend learned that the presence of God was much more vital than God's provision.What would happen if, in the middle of our lament, we grasped that God was really what we needed? What if our sorrow turned to declaration about his goodness? What if we ignored our feelings and, with our lips moved on to the part where we honor God for everything he is?Alone discouraged, finding himself clearly at the bottom, King David was dangerously close to giving up. He could have stuck his head in the sand and prayed for the buzzards to come and deliver him from his misery. But instead he gave himself a wake- up call. David picked himself up by the bootstraps and ordered himself to place his hope in God. 'Why am I so depressed? Why this turmoil within me? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise Him, my Savior and my God." Psalm 42:5Here was David in the middle of depression and despair, and the psalmist is actually preaching to himself. he more or less says, 'This is not how I feel right now, but this is how I am.' Our feelings are fickle, but our God is constant. Sometimes we just have to rehearse the truth out loud."There is so much truth in what you just read. I saw so much of our journey with Carter in this writing of David Nassar. So many times where after all of our calling out to God all we had the strength to do was rehearse out loud (whether in a parent room or our room at the Ronald McDonald house or on this website or to a dear one on the phone) the things we know to be true about God but we didn't feel at the time. So as I come to you tonight I look at this writing and still see so much of our journey with Carter. I must confess, I have walked this particular path in my imagination at least 10 times when Carter has been so close to death. I have his funeral planned, I have tried to imagine these feelings concerning him...if this was the day before I laid his body to rest...but never had I thought for a moment that I would be doing this with our dear little unknown Andrew. Not the one that showed much life on the monitors time and time again. Not the one whose little body checked out to be 100erfect. But here I sit. But here I type. This chapter God is writing in our lives right this moment is not one that people will recall over and over. Here in this fast paced society we take just the moments for the good stuff and we push the sadness to the side as quickly as possible. This is a chapter that we could not have predicted. This is a chapter we never would have chosen. We, like King David, could put our heads in the sands and give up.The counselor in me has to disagree a smidgen with David Nassar when he writes "our feelings are fickle, but our God is constant." I promise all who are taking time to read this that my feelings right now are far from fickle. Every emotion that I walk others through that I work with that are grieving, I promise I am experiencing and I promise fickle is not a word close to my vocabulary right now. But I wholeheartedly agree that our God is constant.I do not know how long my arms will ache for a child I held for just a moment in time in my arms. I do not know how long my womb will cease to bear a newborn life into our lives that will bring joy. I do know that my God is constant. I do know that in the middle of lament right now, in the middle of my heart being broken and my breathe being taken at times out of my body that God is really what I need. I know that He is good and I know that I want my lips to proclaim His goodness. I know that I desire to honor Him for everything He is. He is my Jehovah Rapha and He will guide me through the healing that I need. He will use my sadness to grow me and to change me and to make me less like me and more like Him. I know that he promises that I will forget my suffering, recalling it only as waters that have flowed by (Job 11:16).My prayer is that if your eyes have made it this far in the longest post in my history that you know Him for who He is. If you do not, please seek the answers today. My email address is here on this page...email and Bo and I will pray for you and lift you up as you seek answers for your life. A website with some more information is http://www.sbc.net/knowjesus/ . I cannot tell you how reassuring it is to look my beautiful (he would correct me and say he is handsome) Spencer into those crystal blue eyes and say with assurance that we have hope. To say that with confidence through the pain God has a plan and it is good, it is good, it is good. How I pray you can say the same.Broken but believing,Lindy for her man and her boys (Bo, Spencer,Carter, angel Ethan and angel Andrew)