– God Remembered Me
It feels like forever since I last wrote here. Life kept moving, and I kept meaning to sit down and type it out, but the truth is, some of the things that happened were too heavy to process in real time. I don’t want to skip over them though, because Going Homesteadily was born out of grief, and it wouldn’t be honest to only share the beginnings and not the ways God has continued to meet me since then. These “Catching Up” posts are my way of filling in the gaps, even if it’s after the fact.
When we moved to Dandridge, one of the first things we prayed for was a church home. I didn’t want just a place to sit on Sundays, I needed people who would walk with us, pray with us, remind us that God was still working when I couldn’t see it. God answered that prayer. He gave us a church that feels like family, a place where I could finally put down roots after so much loss and wandering. Looking back, I think that stability was one of the first ways He reminded me that He hadn’t forgotten me.
In that season He was also teaching me submission. Not the kind that means rolling over or giving up, but the kind where you finally unclench your fists and admit that His timing really is better than your own. The word He kept pressing on me was Zechariah. It means “God remembered.” It became my anchor. Almost two years after we had named our baby Zechariah, our church was teaching through Zechariah’s song in Luke about John before Christmas, and the timing struck me like a bolt of light. Even in the seasons when I felt lost, confused, or hurting, God remembered me. That confirmation in His Word became an anchor I could cling to. As Zechariah sang, “Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace” (Luke 1:78–79). Even when I couldn’t see what He was doing, even when I was weary of waiting, God remembered me.
By 2023, after years of heartbreak and healing, we felt ready to try again for a baby. The day I saw the positive test, joy came flooding back in. We named him Jonah, a name God had given me in a dream before I even knew the baby was a boy, a name one that would carry so much meaning. At sixteen weeks, I had a placental abruption. I delivered Jonah in full labor and delivery, and then we had to say goodbye. I cannot explain the ache of those hours. He was the first of our 4 children whose face we got to see. And he was was most beautiful 3 ounces I ever saw. My arms were empty again, but my heart was still full of love for him.
We held a small ceremony at our home. It was quiet and sacred and felt like holy ground. Jonah’s life was short, but it mattered. Through that grief, God showed me something else. Doctors discovered I have a blood clotting disorder, something I never would have known otherwise. When I told my uncle, he decided to go see a doctor after avoiding it for more than a decade. Tests revealed he needed immediate heart surgery. My Jonah’s life, as short as it was, rippled outward and helped save another. God remembered him. God remembered me. God remembered my uncle.
That year became the year of Zechariah for me. Submission, silence, remembrance, grief, and mercy all woven together. I don’t claim to understand the “why” of any of it, but I can say without hesitation that God was present in every moment. And even though the story wasn’t over, I could feel Him reminding me that He was still writing.