March 27, 2021 -- Half and Half Day

We are excited to share with you that today marks a special milestone for Hope's life. . . what she has deemed "Half and Half Day!"  Today marks the exact day of half of Hope's life before her brain injury and half of her life after her brain injury . . . 9 years, 3 months, and 11 days living a pretty typical life, and then 9 years, 3 months, and 11 days living a very different life of severe brain injury recovery.  Different, painful, uncertain, at times devastating while at times miraculous, filled with both deep sorrows and overwhelming joys . . . as different as the second half of Hope's life has been, one thing has never changed through the many many changes . . . God's character!  

God is faithful, good, sovereign, merciful, gracious, full of steadfast love and comfort, present, near, powerful, compassionate, and so much more!  Our circumstances have changed dramatically, but our God is the same yesterday, today, and forever . . . and that has been so evident in Hope's story . . . the story that God has wrote for her.

I have been praying about what to share with you in celebration of this Half and Half Day, and it only came to mind just this morning.  Yet again, God is faithful to provide and to bring glory to Himself through Hope's story . . . I can never express how much this grows our faith and brings meaning, joy, and hope through the pain of the last 9 years, 3 months, and 11 days of different!

I remember this, about 5 years ago . . . 

I am sitting outside of the Bearspaw Christian School in a wheelchair van waiting to pick up Hope and Gabi from school for the day and head home.  As I wait, I see a group of girls from junior high come out of the school dressed in their soccer uniforms.  Some of the girls I recognize from Hope's class.  I remember that Hope had received a soccer ball for her 9th birthday because she was so excited to learn to play.  It was her goal to work at it and be ready to try out to play on a soccer team at school when competitive sports start in junior high.  We had tried to sign her up on a community soccer team the year before, but the community program for her age played all their games on Sunday mornings.  We had discussed it with her, and she had willingly agreed to obey and wait until she was in the next older bracket that played at a different time so she could continue to be an active part of our church body every Sunday.  Those opportunities to play soccer never came.

As I continued to wait, watching the soccer girls outside of the school, my mind started to imagine what Hope would have looked like in that soccer uniform.  Remembering how good of an athlete she had been in other sports, I continued to think that she probably would have been great in soccer too.  I imagined how fun it would have been to watch her games and cheer her on.  Every thought progressed with a deeper painful cut to my mama's heart of how different Hope's life was now going to be.  Every thought progressed with the stinging reality of how much loss Hope had experienced, would continue to experience, and that her family who loved her also experienced alongside her.  My thoughts were taking my mind to a murky downward spiraling whirlpool of painful loss and sadness that I could not escape.  I closed my eyes to shut out the scene in front of me, and welling tears escaped as I did.  "Just don't think about it," I tried to tell myself, "you're torturing yourself!  You can't change what's happened.  Why, God, why?"

My own strength wouldn't have taken me away from the deeply painful place I so quickly had walked myself into.  Thankfully, God took me by the hand and my beloved Shepherd led me to green pastures and still waters . . . I couldn't have got there myself, and that's me just being honest.  He gently lifted my face from the scene in front of me and the pain of the circumstances of loss, to instead look at Him and see His character.  

You see, I realized at that moment, that I saw two different paths, and I had confused them in my mind.  One was the path I had imagined for our precious daughter from the day God graciously gave her to us . . . it was the straight path in my mind . . . a life without brain injury and who God had originally created her to be.  The other was the path of reality where Hope suffered a severe brain injury after 9 years, 3 months, and 11 days . . . I saw it going straight and then taking a jutted turn onto a very different painful rocky path.  However, I realized that Hope's brain injury wasn't a drastic curve in her life's path . . . in fact, and in light of a sovereign God, that curved path was actually a figment of my imagination!  Rather, the straight path, the one that God had created our Hope to be and had ordained long before the gift of her life graced our family, included a severe brain injury at 9 years, 3 months, and 11 days.  

I finally got it!  My limited finite view that Hope's brain injury happened and now she was never going to be any of those things I thought or imagined was faulty thinking.  This wasn't a different plan; this was always the plan!  I just didn't know it before, I still didn't know what was yet ahead, but I knew the One who did . . . her sovereign and good Creator and Story-writer . . . this was her straight path and exactly who God had always created her to be, for her good and for His glory!  I just needed to catch up and get in line for a powerful story of God at work.  And wow, what an extraordinary path God had ordained for her . . . difficult, for sure! . . . but filled with revelations of God's character, filled with faith building trials, and filled with the wonder of God's power and glory on display in the life of a little girl who firmly believes and trusts in her Creator and Saviour!  

As tomorrow comes, tipping the scales of time to a life with more brain injury than without, I cannot express the peace that still fills my heart knowing Hope is on the straight path that God has always intended for her and who He has always made her to be, and that includes her journey living with a severe brain injury . . . He could still heal her and tip that scale the other way, but even if He doesn't, we will trust Him and praise Him because He is so worthy to be trusted and praised!  To know Him is to know this deep in your soul, where no circumstance can rob your peace or dampen your joy!

 

Here is a little message from Hope. . .

"It feels strange today having half my life being independent, walking, etc. and now half my life being in a wheelchair, not being able to see, etc..  I am thankful for the amazing God who has got me through the past 9 years, 3 months, and 11 days.  I am so blessed to be called His!  God has brought me this far, and He will continue to be faithful to see me through whatever lies ahead.  Of this, I am both certain and thankful!"

Philippians 3:12-14
"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. . . But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."

Hope has set her next milestone as "Double Day," where her life living with brain injury will be double her life without . . . that should be July 8, 2030.  Thank you for continuing to love our girl and follow God's story for her.  Your prayers and notes of encouragement are such sweet blessings in each of our lives!  

God is faithful and good, always!!!

You are loved, dear ones!!!