I've been busy lately. Ok, I've been busy this whole last year. My work schedule had been crazy, unknown and can change without much notice. 

I've tried to be intentional about continuing to invest in my family this past year while dealing with a crazy work life. 

A couple weeks ago, I had a day off and needed to catch up on things at home. I brewed some coffee and started paying bills and then filling out paperwork that needed to get completed. I glanced up from my computer and noticed my youngest. Her face told me what I really needed to catch up on that morning. Her face was telling me, "Dad, I need you."

That morning I got a reminder that I needed to be more than just "in the house" and at the table. I needed to be spending my time with her. Seriously though, how could I continue working on stuff when her face was staring at me like that? 

In 2015, our foster son passed away. He was in our home for 20 months. The little guy suffered most of his life because he was shaken when he was three months old. We loved on this little guy for those 20 months and it was tough. There were so many hospital visits, therapy sessions and late nights/long days where loving him mean sleeping on the floor next to his bed so you could keep an eye on his heart rate monitors or be there to comfort him when he cried out because he was uncomfortable, scared, or in pain. Only God could work in our hearts to allow us to love that boy so much and to not throw in the towel and say, "we just can't do this anymore." 

We knew God brought this little boy to our home and He wanted us to take care of him. Our hearts were often hurting because he could never communicate what was wrong and his doctors had said for over a year that there wasn't really anything else they could do other then work with his medications to try to limit his seizures and to keep him comfortable. 

The last two weeks of his life were the hardest on so many levels. The morning he died, I remember thinking about all the things he never got to do with his broken body. I thought about the freedom he got to experience and the awesome things he now got to do. I wrote in my journal that morning, "He's skipped past the crawling stage and went right to running and jumping. His vision is healed and for the first time he gets to see something that we've never seen...His Savior...His healer. No more seizures, no more kid-cart or heart monitor, no more therapy or medicines, no more school....and no more being cold. We're sad, but we're so very  happy for him."

These two verses became very real to me in the days and weeks after he passed away:

Psalm 34:18- "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit."

Lamentations 3:22-23- "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."

God has been so good to us. Those 20 months were hard, but I'd do them again. I'm thankful for a heart that's able to hurt because it points me to a God that meets me in that hurt. He reminds me that it hurts because the worlds not right and He wants our hurting hearts to join His and do something about it.

In those moments where my hearts hurt about something, I've found His "mercies" and His small reminders that through the pain and the hurts in life...He Knows, He's Near and He Cares.

​Thanks Jeremy Camp for this song.