SHE'S ALIVE!!!!!!!!!

God has a strange way of using my children to encourage me, lift me up, or flat set me straight. My children are the greatest sanctification process of my life...the more I am around them, the better a person Jesus molds me into. It's a simple fact that it is hard to be hypocritical when you have a 4 year old...or at least a 4 year old like Justus-- BEWARE he will rebuke you if you are out of line!

Outside of this, God uses them to remind me that He sees my life, He knows my walk, and He is carrying my burdens. From the moment Hannah was born, Brooke did this funny thing: every time Hannah moved she would say, "MOMMY, SHE'S ALIVE!!"

At first I would flash back to the old Frankenstein movie as the monster got off the table and the mad doctor was screaming, "IT'S ALIVE." But after a while I would think, "Yes...yes Brooke she is alive." As if to say, "Enough all ready, we know she is alive...it is obvious." Just the other day it hit me, how would I feel if she stopped saying it? I realized my heart would be broken, and I need to receive that word as a word of faith spoken over Hannah.

When you enter into the pain of a child going to be with the Lord, the words "She's alive" mean a whole lot. Yes, Brooke is stating the obvious...but flash back a year and a couple months and that statement over Ruthie would not have fit. Praise the Lord, Glory to God it fits over my daughter Hannah. You see Brooke's crazy-talk is a reminder to me that God has done what He does best: restore, revive, provide...the miraculous. And she says this at least 2-3 times a day. What a message of His goodness spoken through my house. I also began to realize what a word of faith that is. I remember praying that same prayer over my pregnancy, "Lord, she is alive, she will be born alive, I will enjoy her through my old age, and I will get to raise her." Why did that prayer ever stop? Just because she was born? Praise the Lord that where I fell short in prayer, the Lord placed that responsibility on my daughter who was not afraid to speak the Word of the Lord over Hannah. Starting today I realized that my response to Brooke has always been wrong. Instead of, "Yes Brooke that's right" its "I receive that for my daughter as God's will for her life---long and abundant."

Thank you Lord for using my children where I fall short, and thank you that I have children who love you with all of their hearts, who are not afraid to put their childlike faith into action. I don't deserve them, but by your grace and mercy you have blessed me with them, and I praise you for it. You have used them to make me a better person.