Forgiveness

It seems my grieving process has themes. The last theme was knowing God's love. I don't know why. I always thought I knew God loved me. But to know He delights in me is a little hard for me to grasp. The love I have for my children is so great but the love God has for me is even greater. The kind of love you truly can't get from anyone else.
Anyways, so now the theme is forgiveness and honestly this is hard for me. My pride and anger get in the way so much.
Forgiveness in all sorts of ways.
Forgiving myself. Even though in my head, knowing I couldn't do anything to save my children doesn't mean I haven't been down the path of "what did I do wrong?" or "why didn't I do..." or "if only..." I told myself, "it wasn't my fault" but deep down I really felt it was, at least a couple of times. So I ask God for help in forgiving myself.
Forgiving others. This type comes in different ways as well. I have learned forgiving others is more for me than for them. Besides, most of them don't even know I need or needed to forgive them. Forgiving those who have said hurtfull or thoughtless things (not many have but there has been a couple). Forgiving those that haven't "been there" like I thought they should have been (this one has been hard). Forgiving those that have been having healthy, live, babies, even though I know for sure they did nothing wrong. Like I said, more for me than them. I ask God for help daily, in forgiving others.
Forgiving God. I know, that seems weird. But I've heard from a couple different sources it's a good thing to do mostly just for my healing. God gets the blame a lot in these situations. Yes, God could have saved all three of my children. He could have healed me from the virus and Gabriel could have lived. However, He chose not to. I don't know why, He is God, so His ways are not our ways. So for my benefit and my healing I forgive God for allowing my children to go to Heaven before me.
And last, asking for forgiveness. Perhaps this goes along the same lines as forgiving myself. I ask God for forgiveness for all sorts of reasons. The anger. The unbelief. The not trusting Him. The thoughts I've had. The envy. And the list goes on.
Forgiveness is freedom.


Friday, November 6, 2009 From my journal:

*Today was a blessed day. Halayna spent the night with Mom and Dad so she could go with spend time with her aunt.
Daniel and I got to sleep in until almost ten o'clock! We must have been tired.
We went to Gustav's for lunch with Mom and Dad where we had some delicious fondue. After lunch, we went to a movie. It was a good distraction.
After the movie, we had to run some errands again! We stopped by my store to pick up some paperwork. We received a sympathy card with some money. I counted the donations and was astonished when it came out to be $500.00. I was shocked! We needed $600.00 to cover the cost of the burial. We were praying for the money to come in since there was no way we could come up with it. What an amazing God and faithful too! Praise God!
We already received $250.00 earlier. That pretty much paid for the casket. Praise God!
So we just needed $100.00 more to cover the rest of the burial.
We came home and opened our mail. We got a sympathy card from Daniel's friends and a check for $100.00. So that's it! The burial and casket are paid for! Praise God!
Today was definately a blessed day.
Daniel and I got to ride the motorcycle for the first time together too. That was nice.
We had a nice day full of nice distractions.
Thanks be to you Lord Jesus! I pray for all those who donated their hard-earned money to us. Please bless them most abundantly and financially. Bless them for their giving!*