Today my baby girl would be graduating from high school. It is hard to believe that she is not here even after all this time. As I have spent this past year watching her friends walk through their last year in high school it has been bitter sweet. Many of her friends parents are friends of mine. So while I am so excited for them I am so sad for me. 

I miss her and it is hard not think about what would have been. What would she look like? What would she be like as a young lady? What college would she be attending? So many whats and no answers.......

Jennifer Danielle Perez

When my grief was fresh and I lived daily in sheer agony because the wounds were so deep and people would say things like, "she will never have to suffer", "she is in a better place", or "she is protected from the evil of this world". While all of that is true it still does not soothe my wounded heart.  I miss her deeply! I want to hold her, smell her, and hear her voice. It is not sheer agony on a daily basis anymore and I am able to enjoy what God has blessed me with but my reality and the reality of every parent that has lost a child is it still hurts deeply. Yes even after 11 years, it hurts! 

But here is what I know to be true. God is sovereign! God is merciful! God is my comforter! God will not leave me! God is faithful! 

Without the truth before me I would not be able to bear the pain of the past. And I would miss out on so many incredible blessings. 

If you are a parent that has lost a child and are new to this journey hear me when I say, it is suppose to hurt this bad. You cannot see anything before you right now only what  you have lost. You do wake up every day and face fear, anxiety and anger. You do wonder how you are going to go on without your child. You do want to die so the pain will stop and you will see your child again. You do want to scream at every person you see that their family is in tact. You do spend every waking hour wondering how you are going to survive. Then the next day comes and you do it all over again.  Hear me when I say you are NORMAL!  You are not going crazy! You are a parent that has suffered great loss. NOTHING can prepare you for that. 

But also hear me say it will get easier. You may not be able to open your bible or even pray. But know that you have a Savior that is standing in the gap for you praying for you. 

And then there will be days like today that hit you like a lighting bolt and your heart is bleeding once again. But this time you see hope. Hope that tomorrow will be a little easier. Hope that God is not done writing  your story or your child's story. That's right even though your child is not here their story is still being written and you are a key component of that story! 

Today Jennifer was remembered her short life here on earth is still impacting people and I cannot tell you how much joy that brings to my heart.  See God is not done writing this story and he will write it with or without me. I personally want to be a part of Jennifer's story as it is used to change people and change the world. It has certainly changed me.

So in my pain I am honest, transparent and I don't wallow in it but I acknowledge the severity. Why? Because I love her so deeply that I cannot help but hurt and I love God so deeply that I cannot help but to crawl up in His lap and allow him to comfort me as he uses me and Jennifer to further his kingdom.  I cannot help another parent walking through this if I am not honest about my pain. If I approach you and you think I have it all together your wrong. I still depend on God to get me through every day.  

Today I am leaning heavily on Him as my heart longs to be with her again and as I ponder the "what would shave beens" of my reality. 

Walking the walk

Ever feel like you are all alone on a journey you are unfamiliar with?  You find yourself in a place that  is foreign, a place that other people go but not me. A place so out of your norm that you are not sure how you got here.

I know how I got here.......obedience to God's call on our life but man I feel so inadequate. Unsure of myself. I am having to face things and deal with things that I am not educated on. But boy am I getting an education. Words like lung transplant, pulmonary obliterations, pulmonary hypertension and oxygen are words I am familiar with and as a nurse I can see the signs and symptoms and I know how to treat the physical symptoms. But words like attachment disorder, anxiety, 504 vs Special Education, autism, I am not familiar with and they do not fit in a neat box. I have such a learning curve and I fear I cannot learn fast enough to not leave further damage to my already fragile children.

God has been faithful to put people in my path that understand and have gone before me and I am so grateful for that. They have helped me navigate the public school system, find resources, and prayed for me and my family.

Parenthood is hard on its best day and this is our journey.

We love what God has called us to do but if I was really honest some days I think he called the wrong person.

I know I have a lot of friends out there fighting their own battle. Some with special needs children, some with cancer, some with the death of a child, husband, wife or parent, some with struggling marriages, and so many other things.

If you are on that unfamiliar journey I want to leave you with this, it has not taken God by surprise. Thats right....he has gone before you and he has equipped you to walk this path, even though you don't feel like that is true it is. Not because I said it but because He did.  So hold on to the promise that today is temporary and the King of Kings has paved the way for you. Seek Him. Undoubtably this is my biggest challenge in the storms. To take the focus off of me and put it on Him.

These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world." John 16:33

Twenty years.......it's really hard to believe it has been that long since I first laid eyes on my first born.  It is just as hard to believe that it has been 11 years since I last laid eyes on him.  Though the pain of loosing him has softened it is still there. Still demands my attention. Continues to make me be still and acknowledge it.

I wonder what he would look like as a young adult. Would he be in college or working towards his dream of doing mission work. Or would he have gone the other way? Would he be living a life outside of God's will. Would he have a girlfriend? There are and never will be answers to those questions.

As I am still today and acknowledging the pain that is always just below the surface I am also grateful.
Grateful first of all that I had the privilege  of being his mother. Secondly for all he taught me in his short time on earth. And lastly that I will never know what his life here on earth would have been like but I do know that my precious son is living in glory with the only one who could love him more that I do. 

So I share my children almost daily. Not that you would feel sorry for me but so that  you will see the redeeming love of a faithful God. Because even when your world is stripped away from you and you can see nothing but the darkness in front of you there is a God who is holding the light in that darkness. A God who loves you just as you are.
A God who wants to meet you where you. 
A God that does not need you to "clean up" before coming to him. 
A God who placed his son on the cross to die for you sins, and for mine. 
You see I am not an extraordinary person with superhuman powers. I am just like you.......I am a sinner who can confidently crawl up in my Saviors lap and allow him to comfort me in my darkest moments. Knowing God has not taken my pain away but it certainly has made it easier to bare. 

TWENTY YEARS........................

catch up

It has been quite some time since my last blog entry. A lot has happened in our family since the last post. 


This year has been especially hard for me and especially wonderful. Isn't it funny that you can have sorrow and excitement all at the same time?

Joshua would have graduated this year. I knew this was going to be hard but I thought by the time it got here I would have it all together. And many of you if you were honest are thinking that it has been 9 years I should have it together. The reality of loosing a child is every great thing in your life is laced with sadness. And no we never really have it all together, I am not sure this side of heaven that I will ever have it all together. I have enjoyed seeing graduation pictures on facebook and I appreciated all the invitations to graduation that came in the mail. I really did rejoice with all of you and honestly I thought I would be there in the crowd cheering your sweet kids on. But I simply could not do it. I could not sit in the crowd a bereaved mom, knowing that my son was not walking the stage that night. So if  I hurt anyones feelings by not being there then I am sorry. I am guessing however that I was not missed and did not ruin the celebration. 


This year also has marked great joy and excitement in our family as we finalized adoption on Isaiah Scott Gray! What a joy this sweet boy has been in our life. He is now 15 months old, walking and getting into everything! He is healthy with the exception of some lingering lung issues which are being controlled by medication. He is a fabulous little brother as well as a great big brother. That's right in January we welcomed a sweet 2 month old baby boy named Melachai into our home. We are fostering Melachai and are not sure if we will be able to adopt him or if he will go back to his mother. It's been an interesting journey. Melachai is now 8 months and crawling and following big brothers all over the house. Now you know why I have not blogged in a while. 


Russell and I have crammed a lot in our mere five years of marriage but we are content in walking this journey together. I am married to a wonderful man who supports my ups and my downs. He may not understand me most of the time but he is my biggest supporter and cheerleader. I am a blessed women. God sure knew what he was doing when he put us together. 

November 30, 2011.

 Nine years ago I was changed forever. I will never be the same as I was before loosing Joshua and Jennifer. That is not bad thing but most of the time I feel displaced not really fitting in anywhere. The friends and life I had as a single mom with two children all faded away. Some freinds stayed around but eventually they all returned to their lives with their children as it should be
.
It left single with no children which I did not really fit into that group either since I did have children just not here on earth anymore.

Then I met my wonderful husband and we were blessed with two wonderful children both under the age of four. I'm no longer in my 20's or my 30's for that matter so I really have a hard time finding common ground with mother's of preschoolers when I feel like a mother of teenagers.

Now all of this may sound crazy but this is just another reason why this journey has been so difficult.
I struggle to find my place in life.......perhaps it is because we are not made for this world. This life is only temporary...............and oh how I long for eternity.

A time to reflect

This morning it is raining, finally.  We are in a drought and the rain is desperately needed here.  And finally we are getting some relief. I love the rain, when I was a child I use to sit on the porch with my daddy and watch the storms roll in. Turns out that one of the most valuable things my daddy taught me was to not be afraid of the storms.

Tomorrow is Jennifer's birthday and I miss her so much. She would have been 16, hard to believe. I miss her smile and her silly banter. She challenged me more than any of my boys have. She was very much like me and sometimes that was not a good thing : ) I miss her laugh and the way that she use to talk non stop.

This time of year is especially hard for me and with each passing year it is hard for different reasons. Of course the obvious unchanging one is that I desperately miss my children and my daddy, that will never change this side of heaven. Nine years ago I would have never dreamed I would be where I am today. I did not see how life would go on. I could not see past a day much less think about years. 

I love where God has me and ironically sometimes that makes me feel guilty. Now before I get a multitude of emails telling me how crazy that statement is let me assure you I know it is not rational.  But grief is not rational. And grief is not something you "get over". With each passing year I learn a different facet of grief and I am blessed with the lesson it leaves me with. As long as I am still learning it means that God is still active and alive in my life.

As I reflect on the past I cannot help but be grateful for the present. God has blessed me by showing me restoration in my life. When I look at my two sweet boys and remember my three sweet babies in heaven I am reminded of how much God loves me.

A time to listen

As many of you know we decided last year to become foster parents with the desire to foster to adopt if that was God's will. We started the process back in November 2010 and for me it has been a long difficult road, one I was not prepared for. While I have given my testimony many times over the years there are certain things that I have not felt lead to share except when God puts me in one on one relationships with other women to encourage them. Many of which all occurred before my relationship with Christ, some of my own bad choices, others I had no choice in and all of which brought shame to me. And once I understood that God, the creator of my soul, did in fact love and did in fact want a relationship with me wiped that slate clean. I had not dealt with that guilt and shame since I understood who Christ was and how much He loves me.
Until I had to write it all down on our paperwork to become licensed to foster/adopt. I realized after I had my life laid out on paper for people whom I did not know to read and decide if we would be good parents that I did not look good on paper. And in walked the enemy! I gave him the crack in the door he had been looking for for years. I have been a Christian for 18 years now so you would think that I would have seen this attack for what it was but I did not.
As we reached the final stages of our process I felt as though I had been judged my what was on paper and that I was not "good enough" to foster/adopt. I felt like the people who were looking at my paperwork were seeing all the bad in my life and making judgements based solely on that.
All the while God had a plan, a beautiful plan that I did not realize because I was too busy feeling sorry for myself and for the first time this side of my relationship with Christ I was riddled with shame which in turn made me angry.  I know in my heart that God covered my multitude of sin with the precious blood of Jesus but I was not feeling it.
As we were not so patiently waiting for our licensing process to be final some dear friends of ours got their first placements as foster parents. I have to be honest and say when she called me all excited I sat and hurt deeply thinking again what was wrong with me? Why did they not call me? Was I not good enough to be a foster parent? I know she heard it in my voice even though I tried to sound excited for her. I hung up the phone and cried myself to sleep. I really did want to be excited for her and her family but I was so caught up in my self pity I stole some of the joy from her and sad to say was not a good friend.
Just when I was about at rock bottom. I was sad and quickly moving into depression and quite honestly thought I was loosing it. That is when God stepped in....... I received an email from a friend whose child was friends with Joshua. She told me that her and her son had talked about Joshua and she just wanted to let me know that he was not forgotten. For those mom's out there reading this that have lost a child you know after 8 years what an incredible gift that was to me! She was afraid that she had upset me but just the opposite is true. God used her email to show me that just as he had written Joshua and Jennifer's story he was still writing mine. And just as He was still using their lives to impact others He was wanting to use  my life for the same purpose. I just had to be faithful to follow his lead. It was just what I needed just when I needed it. It reminded me that I am a child of the King and that my creator loves me enough to want to use me in His beautiful story.
We went to our friends house the day they got their first placement and when we left there I knew that those children were exactly where they were suppose to be and that I had to be content where God had me even if that meant that we would not have any other children in our home.
Then came the call, we had no idea we would get because we were still waiting for the process to be finalized. We were asked my our case worker if we would consider taking a 2 month old with medical needs. The baby was still in NICU but would be released soon. Without hesitation Russell and I said yes.
 Now the funny part of that story is when we first started the process I said I was not interested in fostering we just wanted to do straight adoption, no infants and no medical needs. I was selfish in my reasoning for all those and God showed me throughout the classes that I was really trying to take control of what He wanted for me. Of course I believe God has a sense of humor and gave us an infant to foster that has medical needs.
We were allowed to go up to the hospital to do feedings and bond before he came home. And the minute the nurse placed baby Isaiah in our arms I knew we were exactly where God wanted us to be. We feel in love with him even before we met him.
We were blessed enough to bring him home and while we do not know what the future holds for this little guy we  know that we are blessed to be part of the story. And we will love him as our own for as long as God will allow us that honor. He is doing fabulous at home and big brother is incredibly protective of him and simply adores him.
We know that God has a plan for Isaiah 's life and we are excited that He chose us to be his parents for however long that may be.