In September 2016, a friend sent a package in the mail. She had been sending random gifts throughout the year after The Accident. She is an excellent gift giver. I, on the other hand, feel successful if I can click send on Amazon. She sends packages of thought and meaning and thinks of each person in the family. It has been a true blessing to our family.
This particular package had several things in it, and there was a small bag filled with postcards one for each day of the month in October. The note on front of the bag said that she had intended for a postcard to be in our mailbox for each day in October, but since we would be travelling, she sent all of them to make sure we had one for each day. Each postcard had a verse on it, and then at the bottom #Jesusisenough.
I kept the package in my drawer, and last October, I read the verses each day and held them close. Some of them I would cry when I read, because the Scripture is so rich for hurting hearts. I had come to love the Scripture between children number four and child number five when I was learning the Gospel. I would sit and read and let it wash over me. I still do. I would also sit and read and struggle with the tension good biblical theology. How suffering is for His glory? How we are guaranteed pain and tribulation, but He has overcome the world? I knew the day of The Accident, that Jesus had died for this, but I needed the reminder daily. I still do. I need it desperately.
In October, when October is hard, because it is October, a friend wrote verses on Boston, MA postcards that I hold dear and I reread them every morning of the month. Sometimes, many times, more than once.
After I read the verses last year, I thought, “I should start a group and share these verses with my friends who have lost kids too. It’s so encouraging.” But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that that wasn’t the right way to go about it. We are all suffering. We are all hurting in someway. And we all need Jesus. We all need Truth. So, I started a group of Facebook called Jesus is Enough for ladies to join. (It has nearly 1,000 members!)Â In the group only scripture is posted. No encouraging words. No long sermons. No one’s opinions of politics, life or motherhood, just Scripture, because only Scripture is Truth, no matter how hard it is to hear or how difficult it is to believe on the hardest days.
This year, I decided to share those verses. I wrote a post about grieving in public a few months back and this is one of the reasons why I am sharing the verses with everyone this month. It is because Jesus has proven faithful to our family and He is faithful to all of us. I want people to remember that in their pain and suffering, but I also know that my words fall short. Only His last forever and have the power behind them.
My desire is for people to know Jesus and to know Him, to learn about Him, to struggle with theology, to love theology and through the struggle and learning, to learn that our Lord is faithful, true and good. God’s goodness is true and great in the hardest and darkest of times. He is enough, but we cannot claim His fullness without knowing theology and the Word. I challenge you to saturate yourself with it.