The beginning of my journey...

I have been a Christian for as long as I can remember. Two years ago God took me to a place where I realized that the God I thought I knew so intimately was so far different from the God of the Bible. This God that I had been serving and loving for so long had shaken my spirit to it's absolute core until He brought me to a place where I had to make a decision. It was this: Did I really truly without a doubt believe that God is in control of my life? Could he really be all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving if He would allow my dreams to be so broken and shattered?

My husband, Justin, and I were both teaching in a Christian school, leading Children's ministry in our church, faithfully going to church and Bible study. We had always known that God was calling us to be parents and could not understand why, unlike so many others around us, it was so difficult to conceive. Finally in October of 2007 we got the news we were going to be parents and were so overjoyed! We shouted it from the mountaintops to everyone we knew- proclaiming of God's goodness and mercy and faithfulness to those He loved. But unfortunately, our second ultrasound of our little miracle revealed no heartbeat- a miscarriage, a broken dream, a lost hope.

In March the following year, after mourning our first little baby going to heaven, we conceived again. Thinking that this one is the reason God allowed us to go through the heartbreak before- this was the plan all along. Without the first miscarriage, THIS baby would never have been conceived. God was teaching about trust, that's all. And I thought with this one, I could trust God for our plans finally to come to fruition. He certainly wouldn't allow us to have to go through this again. We loved God. He loved us....and the Bible says that "the fruit of the womb is His reward." There's no two people that deserved a baby more than us.

But again, after carrying the baby for three months- no heartbeat.

I was angry at God. I wanted nothing to do with Him or His promises. He wasn't at all like the God I served. The God I served was going to reward me and let me be a mom.

It was after this second miscarriage that God really got my attention and brought me to His Word. (Someday I'll tell the very long story of how He did this.) I was in a place where I didn't know who He was anymore, and I didn't know what or how to pray. Obviously, my prayers didn't do what I thought they would, so what was the point anyway? It was then that God brought me to the Psalms. He wanted me to read about tangible objects that could relate me to His character. He wanted to show me how to pray again through the very prayers that others had prayed. He wanted to show me how honest the Psalmist could be with God and how it was alright to tell Him that I wasn't ok with what happened to us.

Being an artist, I had always been a very visual person. I could remember things more and retain things longer when I drew them. So at the beginning of my journey through the Psalms I found a beautiful leather journal- with blank pages on the left, and lined pages on the right. It was a place where I could write the verses that God was revealing to me, illustrate a picture showing the words, and write my own prayers and thoughts based on what He showed me that day.


I know that this was a long introduction, but I wanted to show how sweet and wonderful and faithful our God is for always promising to reveal Himself to us in our darkest times if we are willing to search for Him. This is my journey through the Psalms on a quest for finding the True God of the Bible and how, through learning about His character, finding He is inherently Good despite my circumstances.