Trust in God to help you focus on the positive memories rather than the trauma

Jesus Comforts the Disciples
1Let not your heart be troubled: you believe in God, believe also in me. 2In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to myself; that where I am, there you may be also John 14

When we built our home in 1990 we did with the anticipation of creating rooms where one day memories would be made. We painted one room pink in anticipation of having the love of a little girl fill that room and we put a border in another room in anticipation that the love of a little boy would fill it. It was with excitement that we finished the lower level to create more space to house family and friends needing a place to stay.

God blessed us with two very beautiful adopted children from Ecuador and Guatemala and we filled our home with decorations from those countries.  We became a family that loved the Hispanic culture and took advantage of Hispanic gatherings. Our home was big and each room had a certain positive memory.

In June 2007 our world was tossed upside down with the sudden death of Maria. Instead of celebrating we entered a world where our once beautiful home which anticipated entertaining others became smaller. We could not enter Maria's room for many months and kept the door shut to keep out the bad memories of the way she died out of our minds. As I read Mary Beth Chapman's book, 'Choosing to see', she writes that there were moments she wanted to hire a group of people to come over and clean out her home before selling it and moving across the country to start over, but then she writes about her home being more than the trauma, more than the way her daughter, Maria died, but her home also had the wonderful memories of birthday parties, engagements, sleepovers, and much more. She realized that moving would also mean leaving those good memories behind!  

Like the Chapman family we learned that God can make all things new again. By allowing Jesus to walk with us He helped us to focus on the positive memories.  By placing one foot in front of the other our family was able to minimize the trauma of our loss and magnify the beautiful memories of our home. Memories like birthday parties, sleepovers, movie nights and Pa Pa Murphy's pizza, watching fireworks off of our back deck, having neighbor children over, and many more such memories.

Like the Chapman family we chose to remain in our home. By doing so our son is learning a very valuable lesson that we can't always run away from bad memories, but by placing those images of pain in God's hands He will help us focus on the wonderful memories in our lives.

As you will discover in this video Heaven is a very real place, A place where our Savior, Jesus Christ, has gone  to prepare a place for you. Our little girl is experiencing this place with all of it's beauty and she will one day have the opportunity to show us when our lives on earth come to a close. While we await that time where Jesus tells us 'well done my good and faithful servant' we also know that there is much for us to do in this life.  There are many more memories to create!