Living in God's Goodness in a Storm

For a few weeks I have been practicing the song, Goodness of God. There is a line in that song that breaks my heart in a thousand pieces, but then I realize that God held those pieces in His hands and has been slowly putting them back together. The line from the song is, "You have led me through the fire, and in darkest night you are close like no other." Oh how I replay my darkest night sometimes in my head. There is nothing about that night I do not remember. That was the longest drive home, I have ever endured. I remember sometime around one in the morning, I got behind the wheel to finish the ride home. Robby asked if I would be able to make it without falling asleep. I can assure you sleep was the furthest thing on my mind. I replayed in my head the conversation I had had with Kayla just a couple of days before. We Face Timed for a while. It was a great conversation. But the anger of how and why she died was a rage I had never felt. I wanted to smash my hand through the window. I can remember what someone told me about 30 minutes before we got the call. She looked at me and said, "Dawn are you sick? You are ghost white." I felt fine, but I obviously did not look fine. The irony is one of the best days Robby and I had had in a long time, became our worst nightmare. When we got home, I sat in the chair until the break of dawn, and I went to where she had died. I do not talk a lot about the details that were being thrown at me from every direction. One day I may share the insensitive things that came out of people's mouth. I had to just tell one lady to please shut up, that I did not care how she thought my daughter had died. There are still unanswered questions about what actually happened that night, and I have just prayed that the Lord reveal in His time the truth.

But out of all that tragedy, God has poured out blessings for our family. He has taught us how to let go of things we cannot control. He has taken past hurts and blended all of us into an intricate family network. Something we could not had done on our own. And God gives me little glimpses of my daughter through her children. They each have have different traits and facial expressions that she had. Although, she could be quite feisty and hard-headed, she had a huge heart. And I see that heart in her boys, event hough they are teenagers, and do not want to show their feelings. Sunday watching one get baptized, I thought through my tears, how we blessed we are. I thought how blessed, I was to have been her mom. I loved my children how I wanted to be loved.

There are days when I get up and going down the stairs, I just look down. If I look to the left there is a huge painting of her when she two and our pencil sketches we had done in NOLA. To my right our some family pictures, and I just cannot look at them. But there again is the goodness of God, because he gave us so many wonderful memories of the time we shared with her here. I am thankful for every picture/video that I took. And I print mine out most of my pictures. To me it is something tangible that I can hold in my hand and vividly remember the moment.

Through my darkest night, He held me tight. She was my second darkest time, but I think He allowed me to go through that time, to get through losing her. He brought me back to Him full circle before we lost Kayla. He has revealed His goodness to me time and time again. He got me through a childhood nightmare when I did not even know at the time it was Him. He got me through the suicide attempt. He held my marriage together. He has given my words to write a book, and I pray that it helps someone going through a rough time. He is helping me get through the nightmare of losing my daughter. I have often asked Him, why am I here, I do not know the answer, but He does. As I was walking the creek today, I asked him to just put me where he wants me. Because those words in that song keep going through my head, "all my life you have been faithful...with every breath that I am able, oh I will sing of the goodness of God." - Goodness of God I have absolutely no idea at the moment of what I am supposed to be doing, I am just living on faith.