The beautiful thing about knowing Christ is seeing God's work of restoratoration in peoples lives

36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Mark 8:36

I must admit that when our family entered the valley of the shadow of death I thought our life as we knew it had ended. What I mean was that there would be such a profound sense of sadness that I would never smile, laugh, or enjoy life like I had before our daughter died and that I would be in the pit of despair forever.

It was through the encouragement and prayers of a multitude of friends at New Hope Church that helped restore each of us in different ways. What I learned from my journey would be that God loved our family so much that he wasn't about to let us go. God breathed life into us through other Christians, through the teaching and worship ministries and through our Homebuilder's Sunday school class, a group our family belonged to ever since we were first married.

I kept remembering the words from Joshua 24:15, "But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Instead of walking away from God and tossing my bible in the trash our family made the decision to keep going to church and keep reading His word while waiting on God to reveal the plan for our lives.

Like Tony Dungy who experienced a similar tragedy with the sudden loss of his son our family continued to place one foot in front of the other trusting God while we were on this journey. God's restoration in Tony's life lead him out of football in 2009 to devote his remaining days helping trouble youth.

Sometimes we have to momentarily go through incredible pain before He shows us what our 'restored' life will look like. The worse thing we can do is to walk away from God while throwing away everything we know about the things of God while watching our lives cascade into the whirlwind of atheism. By trusting God on the journey we are on will eventually reveal our restored hope we have in Christ and closer to our life's restoration. God restored Tony Dundgy's life by calling him out of coaching into a restored life of helping trouble youth.

You might have started off in this life on a certain path, but God will show you a path far better than the one you started off on. Life may be different after your loss, but you will one day laugh again.