Moments with Marri

Art by Lydia Hampton The most valuable, sewn in through pain anchor of a whisper from my Lord this past year is this:   Your pain is not sovereign.    I am.   It has been whispered into the unspoken broken, over my broken body, and surrounding my aching, shattered heart.    God Himself measures the calamity that reaches my little world.    Don’t ever be fooled.    He’ll give you far more than you can handle.    Many conclude within the wreckage of anguish that this must mean He cannot be both sovereign and good.    In our utter groaning we feebly look for some way to calculate the incalculable.    We try to make sense of what seems completely insensible.    I couldn’t even attempt to guess the number of times I’ve replayed the treacherous, my brain trying to reconfigure what could have been or what I could have done differently to change the death of my son.    In the mystery of it a...

  Grit.     That word lingered in my mind yesterday morning after Jason’s sermon on Psalm 42 on Sunday.     The mornings are the toughest time of the day since Haddy went Home for me.     So, as you can imagine, the morning of the 4th of July is humbling.     I laid on my air mattress in my tent here at the campground, listened to nature, and wept again.     I weep for my boy and for all of the subsequent losses and pain so intricately tied to his death.     I thought about the book of Habakkuk, the wrestling lament of a prophet given to us for the good in it.     There it came again.     Grit.     Our faith is pretty gritty, the Hampton kiddos and parents alike.     We aren’t pulling up our bootstraps and telling each other, “suck it up buttercup.”     We aren’t avoiding.     We are messy, wrestling, and fighting for joy and happiness in the Lord and with each ot...

          Yesterday was Bereaved Mother’s Day.    Haddy’s birthday is quickly approaching.   It's a dreadful cluster.  God's provision in the past few weeks has been astounding, yet  I still groan.    Truth be told, some days I still weep with such a full body experience that I hang over the toilet retching, heaving at the bitter providence of Haddy’s death.    It’s a familiar and devastating reality of this new life I live.    The sorrow that lives within me is unequivocally defining. Sometimes I feel so defined by loss that I catch sight of myself in a mirror and feel another heaping kind of loss, the loss of my former self.    Tragedy, sorrow, and trauma still live in these bones.  I need to share a few stories given to me in unfolding layers of goodness and grace.  His steadfast love has been evident.  I need to share it.        Last Sunday I spent t...

To live is Christ, to die is gain.     Philippians 1:21 This verse has been etched on my heart through profound suffering.    As a young girl, I felt a sense of confidence that I could live for Christ but fear that I’d abandon Him if called to die.    As a bereaved mother, that script was flipped.    I’ve felt confident that if called to die for Christ, that I’d gladly go.    Without a second of hesitation, I would’ve given my life for Haddon.    Yet, as I’ve weighed what it means to truly live since Haddon’s death, I’ve been met with incredible trepidation.     How will I do this?     That deep confidence I held as a child has been replaced with a severe longing to go Home.    Daily my thoughts played on repeat, I want to go Home. In time after Haddon’s death, my Lord gave me a deep yearning to go Home well.    When those cyclical patterns of thought would begin, I’d pray with intention...