Simple Pleasures and What Turns Out to be a Testimony, of sorts

Joining up with A Collection of This and That for today's Simple Pleasure:

Despite the challenges of raising a rambunctious and energetic 4 year old, and there are some, it remains one of my greatest pleasures and greatest treasures....and greatest sorrow.  This precious little person was a later-in-life gift from God - given after a time of great sorrow.  Each little challenge we meet shows us we are capable of handling it even when we are at a place where we feel we couldn't take any more.  God proves His never-ending love by never giving us more than we can handle.  And I speak from a place of some experience in that, having gone through the loss of a child.  At the time, we wondered if we would ever see the light of day again.  By the grace of God we survived one of the most difficult things any parent can experience.  And, do you know what the miracle ending is?  We were battling unbelief and this loss, this devastatingly painful loss, incredibly began to pivot us from our self-destructive path and lead us down a new path...one of truth and love.  A path which we couldn't see at the time and has taken the better part of six years to manifest.  The Lord knew and used this horrific time to enrich our lives, to break us and make us usable so He could work through us.  He tore us down so He could build us up again and give us the most precious gift He could, next to salvation.  At the time we asked, what could God possibly hope to accomplish by taking away our son?  Does He think we'll go running to Him when He ignored all our "prayers" for healing?  And of course we didn't but that seed of truth was there even when we outright denied it.  And lo and behold, four months after the loss of little O, we became pregnant again.  It wasn't supposed to happen!  We had just made the decision that it might be OK if it happened again but it wasn't supposed to be so quick - literally within a month of saying "well, if we do, then we do but we're not going to make it a thang" and we were told, "Hey, guess what?  Did you know..."  Talk about a miracle!  We barely had time to catch our breaths and pull ourselves together when this happened.  In fact, I'm pretty sure we would have wallowed longer if it didn't.

So believe me when I say it's been a long, painful yet wonderful road.  Six years later our lives are completely different now.  We have a new home, a new church, hubby has a new job and we've both been given a thirst for God.  Our wild man will be five this summer and hubby and I are constantly surprised by how much time has flown by since that tragic period in our lives.  We wouldn't be in this place without that loss...a place of brokenness and surrender, crying out to God knowing He is our only lifeline.  Little O's life, crushingly short, for only 40 days, showed us ultimate grace, infinite love and ultimately revealed the face of Jesus.

XXOO