In the fall of 2011 an idea was conceived.
God placed a desire in two hearts, to grow and nurture something that we would keep for a while and then send out into the world to do His work.
There has been waiting, growth, anticipation, expectation, nail-biting, anxiety, and much prayer since then.
Now we are anticipating completion.
We are ready for arrival, for the big reveal.
We don’t know what will happen, we can not see tomorrow…
We don’t know what the Lord’s plan is, and we know that only He is in control…
Sound familiar?
But I’m not talking about a pregnancy. I’m talking about a project.
One of my dear friends and I have had the great joy of coordinating and editing a devotional created for women on the Pregnancy After Loss journey by women on the Pregnancy After Loss journey. And today we are ready and eager to begin sharing it and sending it out to the world to do God’s work.
But why today? Why have we been using Easter weekend as our deadline?
Because no time of the year could possibly be more fitting. Life after death. Redemption. Glorious hope.
The Saturday between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday is like a picture of the entire PAL journey. Death has happened before, and you are still reeling from it. You have seeds of hope growing within you but you have no idea what tomorrow holds. As my friend and co-conspirator Kristi wrote once in her article Stuck in Saturday:
Saturday begins when the worst pain is behind you, but a throbbing ache has taken its place. When the sun dares to shine, but your world is still dark. When the abuse is in the past, but not the hurt and shame. When you are no longer hemorrhaging, but neither are you healed. When the rest of the world expects you to be “over it”, but you’re not.
Where are you? Have you experienced the darkness of Good Friday? Do you feel stuck in your Saturday, not really sure where God is and why He withheld His hand of protection from your life? We, too, can follow the example of Jesus’ followers.
Rest. Reflect. Retreat from the frenzy of the world. Talk with others. Don’t be afraid to ask God the hard questions. And do all of this with an element that the disciples didn’t have.
Hope.
They didn’t know what Sunday would hold. They weren’t waiting for a miracle. They were just waiting.
But we know that Jesus rose, and just as He did on that first Easter, God longs to move us from Good Friday to Resurrection Day.
When that resurrection comes, it will not erase the past. Easter Sunday did not change the fact that the crucifixion, in all of its ugliness, had happened. His followers would never forget that day. And there was no “getting back to normal” either. They didn’t return to their former lives of following an itinerant teacher and healer around Judea. No, they went forward into their “new normal” characterized by God’s power and presence in a way they had never dreamed possible.
But first, you have to get through Saturday.
So please, without further ado, come visit our new website Rainbows and Redemption to get a glimpse of what the Lord has been doing. Allow us to journey with you through your Saturday, through your Pregnancy After Loss.
Please contact us to receive your own PDF version of the e-book devotional. This is a free resource to bless our sisters and glorify our Father. And if it particularly encourages you, we would love to have you make a donation to Hannah’s Prayer Ministries as a way to further promote encouragement to others who may be walking this path, now or in the future.
To God be all glory.
Jesus has risen! Death has been conquered! Hope has been restored!
Wow, what fantastic timing. And what a beautiful marriage of the two things so prominent in my mind right now – Easter and the upcoming any-day-now birth of our own rainbow baby! This is beautiful and I will be sharing it with many!!
Wow, what a wonderful idea that God gave you both. I’ll pray that the site and devotional will be a blessing for many. I’ll pass it along to my cousin too who lost her first daughter and is now holding her second daughter in her arms.
Neat! I love what Kristi wrote there. I feel like I’ve been stuck in the Saturday while knowing full well that Sunday does exist!