Rose Bud

As I reached out to comfort a friend regarding her recent loss of a baby, my own similar experience was replayed in my memory. I carried my first baby, a boy for 8 months before I lost him to death. I have known and had God in my life for many years. After the loss of my infant son, an even stronger relationship and understanding with God has developed.....

I was very resentful of my siter-in-law who gave birth to a healthy baby boy just a few months after my loss. She was experiencing postpartum depression also, which I didn't understand at the time. This was partly due to my being so young. She was crying alot and I didn't understand why. She was so blessed to have her beautiful baby and I didn't have mine. She should have been very happy. I even believed that she was also crying because she had possibly wanted a girl and not a boy. Wow, was I ever wrong!.....

It took me a long time and a lot of tears to get past my deep loss of my child. I finally got pregnant again approximately one year afterwards. That was after I knew that my husband could bear the idea of us having another child so soon. We needed to remember that we were not the only ones hurting and grieving. Our friends and families were sad also....

When I was 2 months pregnant with our next baby, I was in an automobile accident. My car was totaled due to a man running a red light. As I stepped out of the damaged car, I suddenly remembered at that moment that I was pregnant.....

It was too soon to hear my baby's heartbeat, so God placed in my thoughts, "If your baby makes it through this accident, it will make it to the end." A beautiful baby girl was born and grew into a a young lady. She will soon become an Optometrist. We were blessed again later with another baby boy..After he was older, he was told about his brother that had died years before. Once he was old enough to understand, he then said, "Mom, what IF God fixed me and sent me back?" Wow, I was so blown away by that statement. From out of the mouth of babes will come the truth. Right?.....

No matter what we believe or try to understand, we must first know that The Good
Lord does have a purpose. I choose to believe that my baby didn't survive because there would have been possible health problems. I wouldn't have wanted to watch him suffer all of his life..I choose also to believe that God reached down and took him before I could get attached to him....

A friend of mine had lost a baby also. She said that after the death of their child, that she and her husband took comfort in this bible scripture..(please forgive me if I misquote..2 Peter 3:8) ...A day is but a thousand years, and a thousand years is but a day in God's Kingdom..(my friend did the math)..It will have seemed like ONLY minutes in time that would have passed, before we join our little ones in Heaven..We will see our sweet little babies there. They will be healthy and waiting there to be loved by us....

I know now that He chose me to help heal other broken hearts by sharing my story to grieving mothers. I truly understand their sorrow. I have been in their shoes. May
God bless you all with His constant Love and Grace..

SOMETIMES God reaches down and picks the ROSE BUD to watch it BLOOM in Heaven......

Story sent in by Cindy..To help other hurting parents...cope...

Send in your stories to sl@michaelallenmarketing.com

Back Burner

This story began many years ago. I had just sat down at my kitchen snack bar with a cup of coffee. I could visually see my son's jeep parked in the drive way through my kitchen window where I now sat in front of. As I sipped on the morning brew, I suddenly saw SOMETHING inside of the jeep. There appeared to be some kind of dark hovering shadow that came to my attention. Then I saw what appeared to be my youngest son sitting from behind the steering wheel in his jeep. SOMETHING was terribly wrong with this picture... WAIT, this is impossible, because my son was asleep in his bed in his room. Then the dark shadow took on an odd form and floated over from the back seat to the front seat now enclosing my son in this dark cloud. "Lord, why am I seeing this, I asked?" The Holy Spirit replied in that still small voice "So that you can see what you need to pray against."

I went to check again to be sure that my son was still sleeping in his room,and he was. I then returned to my stool and began to pray never taking my eyes off of that thing in the jeep. I picked up the phone and dialed a Christian. I described what I was seeing and together we agreed for it to FLEE. Slowly the evil thing retreated to the back seat gradually turning its head away from me. It then vanished from view, and so did the form of my son sitting behind the wheel.

Total revelation came that there would be more episodes like this one to come, and that the enemy of darkness was going to try to destroy my child. I began to fervently cling and quote all of God's word on a daily basis to come against that from ever happening. There are many ways to detour one onto the path of wrong, and that is by a wrong CHOICE. My faith was going to be tested to the extreme, and I knew it. I would have to stand and believe God's word when these trials would come and they did..

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
Hebrews 11:1 (NIV)

We live by faith, not by sight.
2 Corinthians 5:7 (NIV)

I have literally been chasing this boy since he was 18 months old. He was one that needed to be constantly monitored. He was always trying out experiments, fixing or building things, always busy. One example of his kind of adventures was as follows. He could scale up the television outside antenna pole, run across the top of the roof, and be down before being caught. I operated a beauty shop inside of my home. I had noticed that I was hearing a lot of thunder on bright sun shiny days. I finally caught him coming down. He was finally busted. I` knew early on that he would be the one sibling that was going to give me a run for my money literally. He did things that his oldest sister and brother had never even thought of. He was a chance taker, a dare devil...

The teen years brought on unwanted friends. His attitude changed and he was hard to control. The saying "Birds of a feather flock together", "Guilty by association", all true. Through the years he has been accused of many things. He however, always managed to clear himself WITHOUT my help. Cops were always knocking on our door looking for our son or someone that he knew. I would just assume that they were watching my son and eventually would come knocking at my door, and they did...

During one of these raids, I found myself praying AGAIN, "Lord please help me through this trial. The Holy Spirit replied "TRUST ME" I said, Lord I trust you, it's my son that I don't trust." This reply has brought me through my longest test ever just recently. He was incarcerated November 27th 2007. Major charges were against him that could put him in jail for approximately 60 years. It looked like an impossible situation.I regularly told my son that "Only God and a good lawyer could get him out of this." When I would want to doubt, I could still hear "TRUST ME." I serve a God that takes impossibilities and makes a way for circumstances to be made possible. I was going to BELIEVE and stand on The Word of God that these charges would be dropped and they were on September 24th 2009. After almost 2 years of WAITING to be freed, he will be coming home soon. There is just one more minor thing that has to be done, and it will finally happen. My God is not finished with His Plan for my son yet.

Picture your kitchen stove and the 4 burners. They are different in size for a reason. We may start out cooking on the front burner and then gradually move that same pot to the back burner on a lower temperature. We have a choice to keep it simmering or just turn it off. Sometimes we think that we have turned it off to only find out that the burner is still on. The food will be either burnt, or will be saved in the nick of time. Like the food on the back burner, my son has been saved just in time..God's perfect timing.

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Isaiah 40:31 (KJV)

Send your stories to sl@michaelallenmarketing.com