Gracefully Broken: The Legacy of Ellie Love

Short post today. It has been one of the tough days. I don't think about it often, but today, thoughts about Ellie's last day have plagued me. Everything from the moment she stopped breathing in my arms to sitting in the conference room when the doctors told us there was nothing else they could do for her to the her final moments with us. It was an awful day. I came across this video the other night when I was up the whole night with insomnia. It's called, "The Gravity and Weight of Suffering." So much of this resonates with me. I've had those moments of feeling overwhelmed to the point that I feel like I'm completely spent and nothing else is left. Jesus wept as He walked in the gravity of loss. Watching this, I'm reminded that Jesus understands the pain and sorrow. He experienced it himself. Jesus' soul felt overwhelmed to the point of death. He knew what was about to happen to Him, and He dreaded it. I've said before that when I ...

As promised, here is the post that has been brewing for several days now. I'm not sure how long this will be, but I can promise you that it will be POWERFUL. I don't say that because of anything I'm about to write. I'm really not all that great. 😉 But I have good news to share! Keep reading... Anyone who has ever experienced the death of a close loved one can probably relate to what I'm about to say. I find myself thinking about heaven and longing for Jesus to come back all the time. Not that I never thought about it before...I'm sure I did sometimes. But there is nothing like knowing that a part of you is already there to make you ache and long to be on that other side of heaven. This world is painful and broken. But Jesus has promised that one day He will come back, and He will wipe every tear from our eyes. There will be no more sorrow, pain or death. I have never in my life felt more like a stranger on this earth than I have these past 4 months since...

I've had a post brewing in my head for a few days now, trying to meditate on it, pray through it and make some time to sit down and write. Spoiler alert: THIS IS NOT THAT POST. Ha! That post is coming, I feel certain. But tonight, there's something more pressing on my heart that I need to share. What I'm about to share is of the UTMOST IMPORTANCE to me. Please keep reading... I was recently informed that someone close to us is feeling angry at God over what happened to Ellie and our family. To be perfectly honest, my knee-jerk reaction to that news is that it PISSED me off! Sorry, is it ok to say that here? I don't normally talk like that on here (or in general!), but it's the best word I can come up with to describe how I felt about it, how part of me still feels about it. Fair warning, I'm about to drop another truth bomb here. My knee-jerk, selfish reaction was this: If I don't get to be angry at God about Ellie dying, nobody else gets to either. The...

Something really awful happened this week. I mean, let me put that in perspective for you. My baby died. That is the MOST awful thing. Pretty much everything else pales in comparison to that. So what happened to me this week was truly awful. Or so I thought.  Let me explain... I haven't talked about this on my blog because I generally don't talk about it publicly, but I am a lead administrator in a vaccine education group on Facebook. It's a controversial topic, I know, but it's something that I have become very passionate about since my daughter Caroline was injured by a vaccine at 6 months old. Part of my job as an administrator is to find and remove individuals who join the group simply to spew hate, cause problems for our members, or to stir up drama, also known as a troll. Hang with me here, I promise this is all coming back around to Ellie here in a minute. So this week, I received a message from an individual asking me why her friend had been removed ...