I sometimes wonder what people think when they see my IG feed or my FB feed- these beautiful snapshots of our life at Bluebird Haven. Do they think we just have it made? That we’re so lucky? That our situation in life is enviable?

It all looks idyllic, as someone once told me.

But how we got here isn’t idyllic.

Let me tell you what I see when I survey this place we call home. I see grace upon grace upon grace.

God brought us to this place as though we were war-torn refugees. We had no home at the time and the place we’d been calling home held the stench of death. We had been living in a rental, a sweet little gingerbread style house, in a rather idyllic town that was much like Mayberry. But Death came like a thief in the night to our cozy home and ripped our hearts out of our chests. We were a bloody tortured mess. I remember my husband trying to literally tear apart the deck posts when we came home from the hospital without Heidi, and I remember him chanting aloud for days & weeks “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.” He was desperate for some morsel of truth, dry at the mouth as it were, parched from our horrific pain and desperate for a mere drop of Living Water.

When we found this place we now call Haven, it was in the throws of our ugly treacherous grief, and we truly were barely surviving. My husband prayed over and over and over -and we prayed hand in hand in the yard over the house when we’d only made a partially decent offer- the words of Jesus, “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.”

So when I look around me this evening in the twilight, a soft summer glow sparkling through the maple leaves and the highlighted lush foliage, where the quiet is twitter of bugs and the rustling breeze, I am overwhelmed by tender and compassionate and comforting g.r.a.c.e.

May you experience that wherever you are and whatever your circumstances. May Grace meet you on the low road and lead you to a grove of safety.

-BBM

In the hands of the potter,