In my grieving over the loss of my one and only daughter, what is it that I don’t have to do?
I don’t have to make stuff up!

This morning on the way to work I was listening to a broadcast featuring two creation-scientists. I don’t get to listen often but when I do I’m always amazed at the idiocy of evolution. As they speak about all the “stuff” that is being taught as truth, (even though there is evidence to the contrary) I am over and over again praising God for the clarity, simplicity and hope found in Scripture for all who will truly seek.

Jeremiah 29:12-14a says it best: “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord…”

Dear sisters, the down deep, anchored-in, foundational TRUTH that grounds my entire being is/are the truths in the Word of God, THE Living God. The One WHO was and IS and IS to come. My precious daughter has preceded me in death. She is absent from her body – her earth suit, if you will – and is PRESENT with Christ.

How do I know that I know this?

Scripture says, “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.”

She’s not lingering around anywhere on earth, trapped between space and time, looking for some “medium” to channel her into a room of grieving people! She’s not an angel in heaven lying around on a cloud, peeping over the edge, checking us out or blowing us kisses!

She’s not embodied by thought word or deed in any thing constrained by earth!

Every molecular part of my being knows that she IS NOT HERE!

She would be extremely annoyed that anything but the Truth was guiding or informing the thoughts of those whom she loved.

She is embraced and remembered in all my thoughts and memories of her from A-Z; soup to nuts.

The solid rock truth in the Word of God will be all the comfort and peace that I have need of as I navigate the un-quantifiable moments of each day that I live and move and breathe.

There is healing for me and all who grieve in the passage of time, and while it’s happening I don’t have to make stuff up just so I can feel better. I’ll have the feelings that I have and life will be what it shall be. Period.

“O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?” ~I Corinthians 15:55

Stephanie serves as part of the Addiction Recovery Team at America’s Keswick as Director of Women of Character. She has been married for over 30 years to Sesky Paul who is a graduate of the Colony of Mercy. They have two grown children.
Her single focus in ministry at Keswick is to image Christ in grace and truth to wounded and hurting women, encouraging them to make Jesus the truest Lover of their soul and the One in whom all hope lies.

1 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah+29&version=ESV
2 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Corinthians+5&version=NKJV