So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the crawling locust, the consuming locust, and the chewing locust, my great army which I sent among you.
You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, And praise the name of the Lord your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you; And My people shall never be put to shame.
Then you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel: I am the Lord your God and there is no other. Joel 2:23-25 NKJV
I have always loved writing and began blogging as a means of recording “God sightings” in our family’s day to day moments. Those who know me well, know me as the hopelessly addicted to picture taking, post to social media freak. I have always said that’s proof of the good times.
After grief came, I wondered if the sun would ever shine again. Would good times grace our lives again?
We’d walked through infertility.
Grief visited then too, but in a different way.
I grieved what I perceived as wasted years.
Afterall, didn’t God put the desire in me to be a mommy?
Seasons changed.
I always picture God giggling as He blessed us with 4 babies in 4 years.
I was finally living the life I was destined for.
His plan however was different than mine, when he called our Abby back to heaven unexpectedly after 3 short years here.
My knowledge of grief was suddenly obsolete.
I struggled with remembering God’s goodness when grief came. From my point of view, the locust called grief destroyed all the joy we had known, leaving life bland, empty.
As I have thought more in depth about the locusts, Job 2:10 kept coming to mind. I love how it reads in the amplified Bible. “Shall we indeed accept only good from God and not also accept adversity and disaster?” Job had just lost everything and I mean EVERYTHING, his home, his livestock, his crops, his kids. Now Satan was attacking his physical body as well. His wife, bless her grieving heart, advised him to curse God and die. (There’s a whole nother lesson for another day…) The verse ends with an admonition that still issues challenge for us thousands of years later. “In all this Job did not sin with his lips.”
He trusted that the God who had blessed him richly would take care of him during hardship and extreme adversity and loss.
Same for me.
Despite my wrestling and many questions, God stayed close, constantly revealing himself as the faithful God he is.
Since then, my goal has been to make the best of messy, and to focus on God’s restoration of joy, even in our broken and to encourage others to do so also.