Blessed be Your Name!

Blessed be your Name...though there's pain in the offering...You give and take away, but my heart will choose to say, blessed be Your Name!

When Steven & Mary Beth Chapman lost their 5 year old daughter, Maria, in May this year, my heart broke for them...knowing their pain in such an odd and familiar way. I sent them a card with words of encouragement. Not knowing if they would ever see it, but knowing it was something I 'had' to do! Their pain was so real to me...

The deaths of both our daughters and family situations were very similar. Our youngest daughter was hit by a car at the end of our drive way...Our family includes adopted children, as well as birth children! We, like the Chapman family, had an older child getting married just a few months after our daughter's accident. Our Macy, like their Maria, was buried in her flower girl dress. Alike, but different.

We grieved very publicly, because we live in a small town where everyone knows us...the Chapman's have had to grieve a very similar loss in an even LARGER public eye...

I'm saying all that to say this: It has only been during this year (almost five years after teh accident) that I can sing the above lines to the song, 'Blessed be Your Name' without tears running down my face.

Today, I received a post card with a beautiful smiling Maria Chapman's face on it. The message was just a 'thank you' signifying that the card I had sent had, indeed, found its way to their family to bring them truth and encouragement in their time of great loss. Of course these went out to many many people...
The really cool thing is this: they used the words to this song as the closing to their message! All I can say is: WOW! What a mighty God we serve! It is, indeed, with HOPE that we grieve, knowing that those we love so much are safe in the arms of our King, Jesus--Faithful Redeemer, sovereign Saviour!
Praise Him Eternally!