Race to Remember

Thank you friends and family for helping us remember Abigail today in the race! Thank you for being on Team Abigail! Your love and support means so much. And thanks to the ones who couldn't be there, but were there in spirit! We love you! I'll post the pictures soon.

4 Months

It's been 4 months since we said goodbye to our sweet Abigail. We are so thankful for your precious life and so thankful we will see you again! Life on earth will seem so short when we finally make it home and we're reunited! We love you so!

4 Months Old

Happy 4 Months to our precious Abigail Grace! I long for the day that I get to see you again! We're a month closer! We love you so much!

It Is Well With My Soul

"My sin, not in part, but the whole, it is nailed to the cross so I bear it no more! Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord,  O my soul!"

Thankful today for Abigail's, mine, and my loved ones' salvation.  Thankful that even though I grieve, I do not grieve as one who has no hope.  Thankful for my eternal hope and joy.  Thank you, Lord.

How Long, O Lord, How Long!

"Then comes the king's cry: 'I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry.'  One of the reasons God loved David so much was that he cried so much.  'I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping' (Ps. 6:6). 'You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle.  Are they not in your book?' (Ps 56:8).  It is a beautiful thing when a broken man genuinely cries out to God.

Then after the cry you wait. 'I waited patiently for the Lord.' This is crucial to know: saints who cry to the Lord for deliverance from pits of darkness must learn to wait patiently for the Lord.  there is no statement about how long David waited...Only God knows how long we must wait.  The prophet Micah experienced prolonged and painful waiting. 'I sit in darkness...until [the Lord] pleads my cause and...will bring me out to the light' (Mic. 7:8-9).  We can draw no deadlines from God.  He hastens or he delays as he sees fit.  And his timing is all-loving toward his children.  Oh, that we might learn to be patient in the hour of darkness.  I don't mean that we make peace with darkness.  We fight for joy (emphasis mine). But we fight as those who are saved by grace and held by Christ...

It is utterly crucial that in our darkness we affirm the wise, strong hand of God to hold us, even when we have no strength to hold him.  This is the way Paul thought of his own strivings.  He said, 'Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own' (Phil. 3:12).  The key thing to see in this verse is that all Paul's efforts to grasp the fullness of joy in Christ are secured by Christ's grasp of him.  Never forget that your security rests on Christ's faithfulness first.  Our faith rises and fall.  It has degrees.  But our security does not rise and fall.  It has no degrees.  We must persevere in faith."

John Piper, When the Darkness Will Not Lift 

Abigail, I can't even imagine how ecstatically happy and joyful life would be if you were here with us.  I was thinking what today would be like if you were here.  Holidays magnify the fact that you're gone even more.  It is hard to get together with the rest of the family without you.  There is such a huge void and feeling of emptiness.  Missing you so very much! We love you!!!

I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Psalm 27:13

"Life on earth is transitory and true life awaits the faithful in heaven."

 "Now life will be a little less sweet, death a little less bitter."

 "Life is bigger than loss because God is bigger than loss. Pain and death do not have the final word; God does. That final word involves more than life on earth; it involves life in heaven as well, the final destination of this great cloud of witnesses. I find myself thinking often about heaven... There is another and greater reality that envelops this earthly one. Earth is not outside heaven, it is heaven's workshop, heaven's womb. My loved ones have entered that heaven and have joined those who died before them. They are in heaven now because they believed in Jesus, who suffered, died, and was raised for their sake. They live in the presence of God and a reality I long to enter in God's good time."

 God called me to something incredible when He allowed me to carry Abigail! Not only did her life here on earth have so much purpose, but her life in heaven has even more purpose! She has arrived to the greater reality, our true life and final destination with Christ!