His Grace STILL Abounds

Brooke was a book person. She always loved the written word, and she always loved holding pages between her hands, even as more and more books went digital. She dreamed of bookcase walls filled with books that had accompanied her on her life’s journey. She also dreamed of writing a book, and this was one item she mourned in her final weeks as her health declined. As we sat there on her bed that day, I reminded her that she had written a book – in her journals, her blogs, her posts. She had written multiple volumes.

Five years ago today Brooke published her first blog post here, titled “His Grace Abounds” (see link at bottom of this post). The night of that conversation, I found a website where I could print this blog as a book, quickly imported and hit “ORDER”, in hopes to give to her just some of her profound words in a traditional book form. The book arrived at our home on the day of Brooke’s funeral, and though I never got to flip through it with Brooke, it has been such a treasure to me over these months of grieving.

From that first day holding her beautiful words – her voice of wisdom- in my hands, I’ve had these stirrings that I wanted to add to it so I can print again a more complete story for her children and loved ones to treasure. So over the past few weeks, I was able to obtain access to this blog and learn the basics of navigating the blog world. I’ve pulled over her most recent blog and many of her Facebook posts through the later part of her journey and including Justin’s passing. You can see the original source of the post in the Categories section to the right.

As I was bringing these posts over, a hashtag she commonly used jumped out at me. His Grace STILL Abounds (#hisgracestillabounds.). Though Brooke is no longer on this earth to profess this absolute truth, I can voice this with complete confidence: His grace still abounds.

In the past few months, God has put many words on my heart. Some of them pop into my head and I scribble frantically in my journal and make a note to myself to share at some point in the future. Others reveal themselves after stepping back and taking a higher level view of our journey. One consistent thing I’ve learned is this: I have this great desire to share with the community of people praying for us, but rarely can I do so in just a few sentences. 

For these reasons and after prayerful consideration, I have decided to continue writing the story of his abounding grace here, through blog posts.  I hope you’ll continue to follow our story and pray for our family, as we truly feel the prayers of God’s people have carried us during these difficult times.    As Brooke said in her first post 5 years ago , “I pray that God would squeeze every ounce of Glory out of this trial for Himself.”

One thing I’ve learned during the last 5 years it is this: the next phase for us will not look like anything I can imagine. We learned that six weeks to this journey as a family of 8, as the Covid-19 sent us into a period of homeschooling and social distancing. Another thing I’ve learned is this – God is writing our story, and he can take whatever brokenness we face and make it something beautiful.  

Original Post:  His Grace Abounds