Written For One

Every child has a favorite place: a fort, a tree house, a back yard, a park, a swing, a pool and while I had many good memories of each of these, my favorite place was my uncle’s lap.  I spent much of my childhood there drawing and learning and listening.  It was there that I’d write books and he would draw in the illustrations.  There was always a way that my story would come to life when he’d draw.  He’d draw the silliest things, people with too-big ears or too-big noses, never the way I pictured it in my mind.  But always just right, always to make my heart fill with laughter and joy.  

 We often don’t notice God’s hand in our lives until we look back. 

Looking back now, I can see time after time when God nourished that seed He planted within me so long ago.  Times when the ground of my heart was tilled and unearthed and the hard-stone was removed to make room for the growing.  Moments of spiritual drought and some of flooding.  Times when the “push through” didn’t come so easily and the harvest seemed lost.  But there was never a time when goodness wasn’t made of the broken, never a time when God’s hand wasn’t faithfully weaving His purpose and guiding my way until that particular seed came to bear fruit…

SHE BLED is a part of my story. 

    A part of my story that I have merely written, but one that He has brought life into.

                …one that I pray will allow others to seek Him in their own story and find life among the ashes. 

    A part of my story that I never expected to look as it does, but one that fills my heart with   absolute joy. 

                …one that I pray will give others the hope of finding joy again in their own messy, beautiful story.

More importantly, it is part of His stories.

The times when Jesus walked this earth and showed us just who He is and what He is capable of.

                …not a painted bright white image, not a religious set of requirements, or a false opinion of a lofty Christian.

   The story of His eternal plan of redemption, one of restoration, that would defy the limits of time.

                …all because His was the greatest act of love ever to be known and it was done with each of us in mind. 

I set out with the promise that I would write this book for one.   Over and over through the months of writing I have reminded myself of that promise, I have picked up and started again because of that promise, but it wasn’t until the book was published and on its way to my door step that I realized exactly what that promise meant.  

I promised to write it for one:   

for one heart to change and find Jesus, find healing, would be enough and would be worth it. 

But I realized my promise all along was that I would write it for ONE:

for the One God to use as He sees fit to reach a world [or one] in need of His Truth.

I have done what I promised to do: I wrote SHE BLED for One.
The rest is up to Him.

I celebrate a dream that has become a reality in authoring a book, and prayerfully more to come.                   

But I am not the real Author.  I am simply a chosen hand to pen these chosen words and walk a chosen path that leads to One.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.  For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.”

2 Corinthians 1:3-5

“No amount of impossibility can be weighed against His desire to heal His people.” p57

Copies of SHE BLED may be ordered by clicking HERE.

or email arburk25@yahoo.com

My Dearest Isaiah,

I often wonder who you would be today.  But I have to remind myself who you are.

I wonder if you’d be like your brother, bounding with energy and limitless curiosity and imagination.  But you get to run free, free of limitations and restraints.  You don’t have to imagine because you see it all - more than we can imagine as we’re restricted to this world.

I wonder how different life would be different with you, how much our lives would be changed if you had arrived - healthy, bloody, crying and quivering - full term.  But your “due date” was figured by our earth-bound expectation.  You age is not counted by years flipping past on a calendar.  You were not full to term but your life was full of love.  Immense love.

I wonder if you would have a wide smile and silly disposition that would make our days brighter.  But you have brightened hundreds of souls, brought them hope in the story of you.   God has used your brief life to continue His work.

I wonder if you would have the same dirty hands your brother and dad have - boy hands, hands that don’t scrub clean.  But yours are the hands and feet of Jesus in our world, continuing to spread the message of the hope and healing we find only through Him.  I see you written on the hearts of those lives your story, your momentary existence has touched.

I wonder what it would had been like to have met you.  But I one day will and no midwife, no nurse will hand you to me.  Instead, when I am called Home, there you will be.

I wonder who you would be but I know who you are.

You are the first life that ever planted in my womb to be grown and nourished by my self.

You are the life that forever changed us.

      Your Daddy hugs me longer and holds me tighter because of you.
       
      You have given us hearts that understand, hearts that have broken and hearts
                           that have found a Healer.

You are a gift from God my child.  He chose to bless us with the opportunity to care for you, to fill with love to you and to break for you.  He gave us you.

Your story is the story I tell.  Because you, my dearest Isaiah, mattered to me.

I loved you with everything I had.  I dreamed of you a thousand dreams.

As you have life fully, freely, abundantly with your sibling, we will continue to allow your fraction of a time with us to be used for His glory and His good.

I often wonder who you would be today.  But I know, I know who you are.

Love, 
Mama

If Only I Had Known

written Spring 2013

There has been many times in my life the work of God has left me in awe but this has to be one of the most profound times He has done so.  As some of you may know, this Friday we celebrate the life of Isaiah, our first baby who we lost early in my pregnancy.  Last year around this same time, I sat here at my computer and typed these words:

“For years this day was a painful reminder of the loss of our first baby seven years ago.  It was filled with “what could have been” and a deep sorrow.  But for the past few years God has been shining His light casting out the darkness of these days.  On my birthday calendar I keep our family and friends names with their ages next to them.  Our Isaiah’s is left blank beside his name.  Our baby’s life is not counted by years or a number on the calendar.  His life is measured by the legacy he has left us.  His life is counted by Jesus and is not a life lost but instead one of eternal value.  This year, as I watched the calendar days slowly get closer to the name “Isaiah” I was filled with joy.   God has been laying things on my heart to carry on his work through Isaiah’s life.  He has spent the past seven years healing my broken heart, stitching together the hole losing my first child left.  One by one, the stitches threaded shut my wound and the healing of a Father, who knew all to well my pain, took place.  It’s time to celebrate and move forward, to help others find healing from the One true Healer.  There are no dark clouds on this day - only joy eternal!” 

Little did I know what was about to take place in my life.  One month later, May 2012, we announced Heart Stitches.  In 2012 we sent out a total of 37 Heart Stitch bears to families who have experienced a miscarriage.  Today as I sat down with my papers to update my files I was overwhelmed with a flood of emotions.  This year alone we have already sent out 26 bears.  The amount of bears we have given…63.  Financially it doesn’t make sense.  When we tell you each bear costs an average of $25 to send, we truly mean that.  This is nothing short of the grace and provision of God.

We  have also recently launched our HS Treasure Bracelet to memorialize the lives of the babies whose precious lives never lived outside their mamas womb.  As I wrote down the orders I realized we are already low in stock and will need to make more bracelets right away.  It is an understatement to say that God has grown Heart Stitches greatly over the past few months.

Next, I began checking our messages and found a few of the most touching stories I have ever heard.  One read: “I received my bear this past weekend.  I cannot even begin to tell you the joy it brought to me.  I thought, holding that bear in my arms, that I would be overwhelmed with sadness, but instead, I could not stop smiling.  The bear is the perfect symbol of our precious little life.  It is displayed on a shelf in my living room, and I smile more every time I look at him.  Thank you for this ministry.  Thank you for your kindness.  Thank you for your prayers.”

 In the back of my mind I began thinking of several of the families who have allowed us to journey with them. A friend who we sent our very first bear to is pregnant and due very soon. Another woman dear to our hearts has just lost another unborn child. And a family who just found out they are expecting again and asking for our prayers. There are so many emotions and feelings involved when dealing with something so sacred and deep. I was overwhelmed as all of this seemed to flash before me at once.

Thinking back to 8 years ago when I sat in my driveway begging God to let me keep my baby,  I was young and scared.   I wanted so much to bring our child into the world and care for it the way I dreamed of each day.  I had never prayed as hard as I did that night.  But as the night turned into day, I knew I couldn’t have the life I pleaded for, the child I begged God to let me keep.  I knew the time for me to care for my little one was soon going to be over, that the life I carried inside of me for weeks before was now leaving.  I cherished those last days with him, treasured them in my heart.  It wasn’t until he was “officially” gone that I went numb.  If only I had known.

Knowing what an impact his short life would one day make in this world would not have made losing him any easier.  But I wish I would have known and understood God’s Sovereignty and Love like I do now.  I wish I would have trusted that He would take even the most immeasurable hurt and turn it into something so beautiful.  I wish I would have known that my precious angel’s very short life would long outlast his days.  I wish I knew even more than I had what a blessing God had given me when he chose me to carry Isaiah.  And I wish I would have known the loneliness and splitting silence I felt after losing another baby would one day allow me to understand the hearts of so many.  That fully knowing the profound joy of giving birth to three healthy babies while fully knowing the profound sorrow of losing two others would put me in a place of ministering from a real, honest heart that understands.  If only I had known that God would absolutely use the most tragic of days I’d faced to bring life to another broken heart.  If only I had known.

It may not be understandable to some, but I am honored to be their Mama.  I am humbled each day as I hear of another life touched, comforted and encouraged.   I am in awe how my Great God can truly turn our broken, storm-tossed lives into precious beauty.

“O, afflicted one, storm-tossed, and not comforted, Behold, I will set your stones in antimony, and lay your foundations with sapphires.”  Isaiah 54:11

As I sit here tonight, I don’t know where you are at.  I don’t know your story or what you have suffered or celebrated.  But what I do know is that my God is good.

He is Sovereign.  
He is Able.  
He is Healer.  

He gives beauty for the places that are scorched, charred and beyond recognition.

“To all who mourn, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive of praise instead of despair.  In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the Lord has planted for his glory.” Isaiah 61:3

I know that it does not matter how broken, bruised or crushed you may be - God is Who He says He is.  

I know that He is the God Who brings life out of all that seems dead.  

If only I had known then.