Kiss Your Miracle

At the beginning of the summer, my mom told me she wanted to start a blog. Adam had just set mine up a few months earlier, and he volunteered to do one for her too. We decided we’d work on it when we were all together in Michigan in July.

“Do you have a general idea of what you want to write about?” I asked my mom. She thought for a minute. “You know, when I was younger I used to view the hard things that happen in life as exceptions,” she said. “But the older I get, the more I see that life is really a long series of difficult circumstances. There is always something wrong.” For a moment I just looked at her, surprised to hear those words come out of her mouth. My mom is optimistic to a fault. “What I want to do is offer people hope for how to get through those times,” she continued. “We’ve been through a few things,” she pointed out, and I knew she was thinking of their experiences raising seven kids, the financial issues they’ve faced, and even their recent home sale, which only happened after four long years of ups and downs. “God helps us get through the things he allows in our lives,” she said. “Maybe I could call it ‘Get Through This’ or something like that…”

Adam went to work, helping my mom buy a domain name and choose her theme. She finally decided on “Getting Through This: Encouragement to Keep Moving Forward,” and picked a blue and white wave background to symbolize the way life can sometimes seem to swell up and crash over our heads.

Little did we know then that just a few months later, my mom would use her blog to share about what might be the biggest struggle of her life: my dad’s terminal cancer diagnosis. You might be thinking, how sad! What is she going to write now? How can she encourage others when she’s going through so much herself? But that’s just the thing. Her joy in the Lord is more apparent now than ever. And what she is facing now gives her new authority to be an encourager.

On Wednesday she wrote a post called Chuckling, about how much she appreciated hearing my brother Nelson and my dad talk and even laugh as they all drove to my dad’s first radiation appointment. I’m consistently amazed at my mom’s ability to accept what she’s been dealt and find God’s goodness even in the middle of her tears.

She also happens to be a phenomenal writer. If you haven’t already, stop by her Website, www.GettingThroughThis.com. I think her perspective will be a blessing to you. It is to me, every time I see it.