She Reads Truth by Raechel Myers & Amanda Bible Williams

Author:Raechel Myers & Amanda Bible Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion/Christian Life/Women's Issues
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Published: 2016-10-03T16:00:00+00:00

DO NOT FORSAKE THE WORK OF YOUR HANDS

I put off visiting Evie’s gravesite for three months after we buried her.

Only a parent who has turned through the pages of a headstone catalog can understand how sacred that ground is. Too sacred to approach most days. Too cruel to trod. Knowing your child is in the ground beneath you makes every maternal instinct you’ve ever had fire on all cylinders, and it takes superhuman willpower, and sometimes a strong friend, to keep you from just digging.

Three months is a long time to wait, but that was how long it took for me.

One Wednesday afternoon in July, without warning, it had been exactly long enough. Suddenly, I needed to be where she was, no matter how much it hurt. I grabbed my Bible, my tennis shoes, and my courage and drove in the direction of my baby.

With no headstone yet, I knew our girl’s place by the small white cross her daddy had laid on the overturned dirt before we left her that day in April. It was still there. Which meant she was still there. Simultaneously comforting and crushing.

As I sat in the dirt next to my daughter’s grave, I talked to her. I don’t have any idea what people do at gravesites, but it felt nice to greet her and to let her know that we were doing alright. I had my Bible tucked under my arm. I didn’t have a plan, but I knew I was definitely going to want it.

It felt appropriate to read a psalm, so I opened my Bible and it fell naturally open to Psalm 139. I’d spent a lot of time camped out in the Truth of that page over the past six months, but I was hungry for God to show me something new. Psalm 138 was one page over, so I began to read it aloud—maybe to myself, maybe to my daughter, maybe just to prove I was still breathing:

I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart;

As I inhaled and exhaled, I prayed the words I was reading:

On the day I called, you answered me;

my strength of soul you increased.

It was the Truth. He had always answered me. But would I ever feel whole again?

Though I walk in the midst of trouble,

you preserve my life;

you stretch out your hand against the wrath of my enemies,

and your right hand delivers me.

Yes, God had delivered me, but did that mean my story was over? Would this be the one great work of God in my life? Was this His singular effort to call me to Himself and to mold me?

The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me;

your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever.

Do not forsake the work of your hands.

I realized as I read that last portion of Psalm 138 in the dirt that day that the Lord was doing a greater work in me. My own flesh and blood had passed away, but this tragedy wasn’t the end of my story, and it wasn’t the only part of my story.

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