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As we pass the 1 month mark of Owens birth, death, and burial…questions remain, hurts remain, memories remain, and hopes remain deferred. What are we to make of all this? Pious platitudes seem quite hollow, even if they are constructed upon eternal truth. My heart craves real, honest reality…real hope…real change, I don’t want to […]

I came across this in my reading today:
Difficulty does this, it changes your perspective. In ways that are subtle and not so subtle, it alters the way you see your world. Perhaps it causes you to look at your world through the lens of fear and dread. Or maybe it makes you look at life […]

I suspect that for decades, there will be days of the year that we celebrate and days that we mourn.
It’s hard to do both in the same day. Like Mother’s Day, we’ll always celebrate God’s gift to Erin in motherhood and remember the time she did get to share with Owen, though it was only […]

On Mondays, I had been posting blessings that I was giving my sons every night…but for a series of weeks I stopped posting them. No real reason, forgetfulness maybe. But it is a habit that I wish to continue again. But, before I post this weeks blessing for Jude, I want to share with you […]

Bracelet 1Originally uploaded by cultivatethesoul.
Davids servants asked him, “what is this thing that you have done? You fasted and wept for this child while he was alive; but when the child died,you arose and ate food.” David said, “while the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, ‘who knows whether the […]

I’ll wrap this 5 parter up with this…The Comfort of Friends.
Like I said earlier, I wanted people to see the comfort of God’s hand in the midst of such daunting circumstances and the two ways that are most visible are through Scripture and through Friends. These kinds of circumstances really do clarify and define things, […]

The glory of a young man is his strength, right?
A while ago I talked about being the daddy of a dude, well….my son has again proved himself “dude” worthy. Let me explain.
Monday night we arrived in Nags Head around 8 p.m. We were waiting for the other families to get to the house, so we […]

Sunday afternoon, a good friend asked us to join his family and 5 other families in the OBX for a few days. It is a major blessing. We needed this and didn’t even know it, I’m so glad that God used them to help us.
Good friends, good weather, good conversation…this is the family of God.
I’ll […]

IMG_5740
Originally uploaded by cultivatethesoul.

I though we’d start this tradition off with a photo that was taken by a friend and then displayed at the memorial service.
I’m still working on how to do this stuff, so I’ll put the others up when I can. But if you click on this one, it will take you to […]

The Comfort of Scripture.
“My soul clings to the dust; give me life according to your word!” (Ps. 119:25)
In the midst of pain, especially the pain of losing your child…it is hard to see and especially feel the comfort of God in His word. Words seem so small…words seem so distant.
Though sometimes you can’t see the […]

Structure.
It had to be right…the service had to allow us to grieve and to worship, to cry and to hope, to love and to let go. I wanted the service to have a rhythm, to carry us.
In this time our souls were downcast and there was turmoil within us…yet we are to hope in God; […]

Memorial Service or a Funeral?
It may seem odd to have a memorial service for a child who lived 8 months to the day in his momma’s belly and 8 hours to the hour here on this earth…what is there to remember that would bring any comfort?
As I wrestled through this decision it became clear to […]

Enough time has passed since we held the memorial service for Owen…not enough time to dry up every tear, but enough time to make remembering and now sharing the evening possible.
It was a beautiful night. There were moments when God’s goodness was as thick as the air in August. For those of you who could […]

I’m so sorry to all of you who had your donations to Children of the Nations returned. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, we had a misprint in the obituary that ran in the paper. We asked people to send a donation to COTC c/o Harvest Renewal Church. The problem was we put […]