{overcome}

Moments. Collected.  On display in glass cabinets with sturdy wooden casings. Filed. In tattered scrapbooks with pages dog-earred for gazing & for nostalgic reminding.  Moments.Transforming.  Rearranging.  Reconfiguring too. These gathered breathes are blissful. Ones that capture the heart on this side of heaven. Stretched out & gathered up, we  can identify with these wonderful feelings. Overwhelming notions of love, pure & true, piercing right to the center of our souls even. Yes, we've all experienced this side of heaven more than a time or two.

And then there's those moments that turn our world upside down.  They bring us blankets of grief heavy and entirely too warm to our bare skinned life.  They rest dead center on our chests causing movement to halt.  Our moments become frozen and freaked out by the unbelievable that has just uninvitedly made its way into our storybooks.  Anger, huge swells of disbelief and an indescribable sadness, deep & all of a sudden thick rooted, wedges its way into our hearts. Dull & foggy are those dog-earred and behind-the-glass moments of bliss for just a time.  This side of heaven hurts.

Today's contributing author is petite. In her Earthly stature, she is so very feminine & small.  To see her in person, you would never guess her age or the fact that she carried 4 babies in her womb.  Her voice is soft. Yet when she chooses to speak, her words rapidly leave her lips with equal parts conviction and a borderline blend of sarcastic humor & bubbly zeal.  She is meek.A watcher. A deep thinker.

But her life? It is strong.  It is sturdy rested in God's care.  She is a living example of sorrow and hope and His side of heaven.  She chooses life.  Through the absolutely unchosen moments as well as the ones preciously tucked away behind her own glass case, this individual continues on this Earthly path marked hers.  She does so with the love He has invested in her. With the hope she finds in her 3 children walking their own Earthly paths with realness & courage. And in the steps she claims as her movements.  For without a doubt, her memories are most certainly dog-earred a bit more for she has so much to share with her precious child waiting anxiously to see her on His side of heaven.

I want to thank her for her courage and for her fight to be grateful through it all. Please welcome Kelly Lynam to the blog.

This spring we put in a pool.  I called it our lake replacement.  I spent the summer watching my children dive, flip, entertain friends, and just be kids.  To most this would be normal.  No reason to be in awe.  But my kids are OVER-COMERS.

To over-come is to “conquer a problem: to struggle successfully against difficulty or disadvantage.”  My kids have struggled successfully.  They have been given the hardest difficulty and overcame it.  And I am awed.

You see, my kids watched their brother die in the lake.  They were both in the water experiencing the same pain and horror he was.  Electric Shock in water is not something you ever forget the feeling of if you survive. And yet they have both gone back in the lake and the pool.  Why?  Because they are over-comers.  Through help and encouragement, they struggled successfully.  Does that mean they don't have moments of doubt when they put their foot in the water?No, it just means they can trust God to give them the ability to take the second and third step.

A couple of weeks ago, while on vacation, Kenzie was afraid of the ocean.  Her fear was preventing her from having fun.  Ross came over, picked her up and carried her out into the water.  Once he put her down, she became an over-comer.  She loved it.  Ross helped her struggle successfully.  He amazed me.

Sometimes being an over-comer is not our choice but someone forces our hand.  Someone picks us up and deposits us right where we didn’t want to be; only to find out we did want to be there.  We struggled, but we were successful.  And we were grateful.

And sometimes no matter how much we have overcome something we may relapse.  For me and my kids, every time information on electric shock drowning comes on TV, we can relapse.  Why?  Because we have experienced it.  We have felt the current running through our body.  For us, it is a constant battle to overcome.

It takes everything I have to wake up grateful.  To overcome the sadness and the grief.  To be an over-comer is hard and sometimes just not possible. But everyday, I look at my kids and I am reminded.  If they can over-come their experience, then so can I.  And that is when I close my eyes and ask God to remind me of His promises. And He always does.

I am a wife and a mom to four with one in the care of our Lord. I own a children's art studio where my goal is to instill the love of art in children. I am not good with words that would ever inspire, but I do wish to share my heart no matter how hard it is. I write with my mom and sister at our blog, FiftySeventyNinety.

To open all 31 gifts from this month's celebration, visit this link.