Welcome to Wildflower Hope…. a space that has been re-born from both deep pain and deep praise.
I am honored and humbled you stopped by…. whatever may have brought you here, I know you are here for a reason and I don’t take that lightly.
Whether you are also hurting, helping someone who hurts, hunting for HOPE, or maybe you’re falling into a never ending pit of darkness and find yourself digging for light and life among a wasteland…. or perhaps you stopped by to read our sacred story of wild love and deep loss of our Gianna Lilyfaith.
Perhaps you walked those agonizing weeks of fighting for her life with us through prayer and you witnessed her bravery and our agony shared through social media on our page on Facebook…and you (with so much of the world) wept with us and grieved with us ….and have come alongside us to continue to honor her beautiful life because you are drawn to her light and forever heartbeat that still shines so brightly, even from heaven. Her sparkle is a light that will never go dim. Or maybe you heard of a miracle of new life (Gianna’s little sissy) that was born into our lives from the depths of our pain and you want to read that sacred story of how God can bring Hope and light in the darkness and of how our Gianna’s miracles go on forever….
…or maybe you are interested in learning more about the miracle and messiness of adoption and want to witness how God supernaturally knits a family together through a broken way. Or perhaps someone shared this post (please feel free to share my blog) and you clicked a link out of curiosity…..
…For whatever reason that you may have been brought here, I want to Thank you for stopping by….Your presence is not lost on me and not by accident. Thank you for taking the time to intentionally pull up a chair and lean in close….. thank you for entering our “broken garden”….. and reading our busted up hearts and not being afraid of the ugliness of grief, the darkness of pain, the messy miracles of new life, or the brave unearthing of wild HOPE.
I love gardens, I feel like they tell a story of our walk with faith and truth.
We all need a tangible visual of Hope and mine is a garden, a garden that was born out of utter brokenness and lament. A garden that grows around the loss of tree that was assaulted and killed by a terrible storm.
Because, when we walk through this broken garden (our Gianna’s Victory Garden), we see a testimony of Truth. We witness miraculous new life rising from the ruins.
We see loss that will never ever be replaced. We see brokenness, but we see beauty growing.
We see redeeming LIFE that grows around loss. We see glimpses of HOPE….WILD, redeeming, daring BRAVE HOPE that is being unearthed from a dark. desert wasteland….
We see GOD…. God.
His light in a pitch black darkness.
It is here that we We tangibly dig for roots of foundation and seeds of promise that mirror our forward fight of faith.
We see our Gia, and her victory of life over death.
Her life growing our life forever. Her life of love and bravery multiplied in our lives.
WE SEE A wild hope born from ruins….
I am absolutely a lover of all things “God’s CREATION”. God speaks to us through His artwork on this earth and its when I am out in nature that I most clearly here His truth and grace and guidance. Gardens are sacred to our God. Our stories all start in the paradise of a perfect garden…. with a tree that GIVES LIFE. But, we sit in between two gardens. We sit in the middle of a now broken garden, awaiting our promised restored garden made new. We sit in landscape of brokeness, with a promised HOPE coming. God is the greatest story teller and He reminds of HIS story through creation. Creation praises God. The bible says that even the rocks cry out, and in psalm 96 we read that the trees actually sing for JOY to their maker!
So, I want to share a story with you about a special fruit tree because this tree’s story is singing to my heart and guiding me through the wilderness. And for you to understand how this blog was re-born, then you need to know this story….
So I pray that you will just spend some time with me in my garden right now….to linger as I share how God speaks light through the darkness and comes near to the most broken hearted…. How he whispers life when all you can feel is death. I pray my story brings you light and hope. My prayer is that you see GOD.
We have this glorious fruit tree orchard in the back of our property just across from a wooded stream. In the summer these fruit trees extend their leafy arms to the heavens and sprinkle a waterfall of purply-black, juicy, sweet mulberries over all the land. In fact, when they drop, you know they are ready! It’s been our tradition, every mid June, to gather the most plump mulberries and enjoy all their syrupy stickiness on our tongues and watch our fingers get stained all shades of red and purple. There is something so wonderful about finding and eating your treasures in your own fruit tree garden!
The trees all hang low, so even the tiniest berry-picker can reach to grab his or her deep purple treasures! Our mulberry tree garden seems to ring in Summer each year and we have made it our tradition to play under the canopy of trees, in the shade, and climb their branches as we welcome the glorious season. It’s like our own piece of heaven. Each tree is perfectly placed and planted to hold hands with the next tree and give the refreshing uninterrupted shade as we harvest all the goodness! In fact, the first day we moved to our farmette, I remember gazing out at that garden grove of mulberry trees and feeling as though God was whispering to me that this tiny piece of earth would be very holy ground. To say I was attached to this little paradise was probably an understatement.
….Fast forward almost three years later, it was March of 2018 and we were just on the heels of a much desired and ached for Spring, after a long and dark and dreary winter. In fact, Spring came but our Spring broke and was hi-jacked and Spring will never ever be the same for us again on this earth.
On the First day of Spring, a fierce winter ice/snow storm pummeled our land and brought destruction to our land and everything about this storm felt like an assault on my heart. Even in the moment, I could not understand why I felt such a heaviness of oppression with that storm…Well, I would realize later, looking back, that this random storm was a glimpse of the destruction that would soon pummel my family and our whole world….When our Spring would break forever.
I remember feeling so sad because this ice storm totally unexpectedly terrorized our newly arrived spring and killed one of our beloved berry trees that held SO many memories. Just days later, a storm came through our world, with no warning and life fell apart and death painfully assaulted us and our world went dark…so dark and unfamiliar and ruined.
Just like this dead mulberry tree that broke under a storm…it was just days later that our World crumbled into a thousand pieces when our beautiful warrior Gianna went into acute cardiac arrest….and we would fight for her life for three dark weeks trying so desperately to clean up the damage left from this attack on our baby…..
but..this storm that pummeled and pulverized her tiny broken and brave heart and lungs was too much to rebound from. The damage was irreparable and the greatest feeling of agony and slaying and betrayal fell on our spirits and we entered the midnight of our souls. Our hearts were crushed to ruins as the sun was stolen right from the sky. Darkness overcame our world.
We had to walk our baby to Jesus when God did another miracle, one that we did not pray for, but one that our Hope rests on… He overcame her earthly brokenness with a healing that this world could never give her. Her heart was made whole… but as for us, we were left with shattered and ravaged hearts that can only be made new by Eternity.
We came home from the hospital without holding our baby girl and I will never be able to find the words to explain how terribly wrong that is….How everything in your body SCREAMS “NOOOOOO!!!!! I WILL NEVER LEAVE HER!!!!, I will never leave my baby!!!!!” ….because a mama and daddy are NEVER suppose to leave their baby! … yet, they make you walk away and go home empty-handed into a landscape of ruins. It is all so broken, so wrong. NOT OKAY. This is not how it is supposed to be.
We got home and were so offended to see that Spring did in fact come to our farm. Everything was evidently alive, growing and shiney…. It all felt like it mocked our sorrows. I hated it. I needed to see a mirror of my dark cold soul. I needed to run to that broken land where our tree was victimized and I needed to fall to the ground and feel like creation was weeping with me. I remember collapsing to the ground where that tree had fallen just weeks before and wept and screamed and punched the ground and screamed at heaven, I screamed at God, I screamed at the tree, I wept and wailed with groans that can not be translated!
But, God did not leave me there. He whispered through that broken tree and said I would see beauty…that I would see glimpses of glory to come. That He would use our pain to birth a Beauty that would never replace my stolen beauty, but a NEW goodness in the land of the living.
All grace….
Grace, that I, in my fetal position of shaking and sobbing, could even hear God through my lamenting. But, He is never afraid of our doubts, our anger, our lashing out. He does not turn away. He comes close and weeps with us and sings a louder song.
So, I surrendered for only seconds long enough to dig my hands in the cold barren dirt with my family. We claimed that dead ruined ground for miracles and beauty. I had to claim truth when all I saw was death. I needed to see truth when I couldn’t believe it. I could not believe that I could ever feel goodness again, so I had to dig and witness what beauty out of pain could look like. I had to stomp on death’s face and scream that eternal life wins or I was going to throw myself in the ground to be buried too!!! I had to see what I couldn’t feel! My baby was no longer in my arms and I felt so dead inside. I needed to SEE LIFE to survive my greatest nightmare come true.
I needed to see HOPE that I could not feel.
How could There ever be beauty again??
How could I ever believe in GOD’s goodness, when life kills you and feels like such a betrayal. We fought with a faith that felt like it was being shattered. But, God never let us go.
Somehow, He lifted our wrestling hands to plant seeds of faith. And, the seeds planted in grief and tears and lament grew miracles of new life. That painful dark first spring with Gianna in heaven, her garden grew around that broken stump and, though the new beauty didn’t replace the glorious tree or ignore it, it bloomed in color and life Around the stump, around the deep loss and pain. Life from the ruins.
There was life blooming from the depths of a wasteland.
This sacred space under a broken Mulberry tree exploded with colorful wildflower life bursting around a barren hole and dead stump and became a symbol of the power of God to grow and redeem and bring new life from the ruins.
This broken garden that reveals HIS whispers of redemption points to the truth of a coming glory when all will be made right again.
This is about a story of HOPE told through creation that gives glimpses of a deeper promise that keeps my heart digging for beauty in the valley of the shadow of death. A garden that keeps me on my knees digging and praying for open eyes to not miss the hidden love notes from heaven and my Gianna. Heavenly Notes that tell secrets of a glory that is to come in our future eternity. This broken garden is where I hang on to HOPE and catch glimpses and catch my breath as I see hints of truth.
This truth is about a God who wins over death and is NOT done revealing HIS story of redemption… He is never done.
This is WILDFLOWER HOPE that saves my broken heart and keeps me limping forward.
The wilderness and the dry land will be glad; the desert will rejoice and blossom like a wildflower. Isaiah 35:1-2
so… if you still have time to linger in our broken garden, I would love to keep sharing our story of why The blog’s name had to change.
WHAT?? A new blog name!?? What’s the deal with that?…what about the title: STOP FOR FLOWERS?
So, some of you may know (scroll wayyyyyy back) I have been blogging in this space for well over 12 years. It has been so wonderful to capture all the memories and the beauty and the craziness on these pages of our journey of growing and raising our family. But, I have recently changed the name of my blog to reflect this side of that sacred day of April 22, 2018 where all is seen through a new lens. Life is so different. And, so much of life needs to reflect this deep transformation and this marking of tragedy…..to honor the pain.
My family is deeply changed after our daughter went to heaven and this space reflects that radical change. We now live life differently with broken hearts and we fight forward to grow in grace around a gaping hole that eternally screams loss and sadness.
My old title was called STOP FOR FLOWERS (don’t worry, the old web addresses still work!)…. and this was named during a long season before life fell apart….when goodness was SEEN all around me and I did not have to try so hard to see it, as long as I slowed down life ( which was one of the reasons why I started homeschooling over a decade ago). It was my desire to be intentional and pause that crazy-train of life to relish in all the goodness that danced all around us in our garden of happiness. Of course with my first 4 babies born within 5 years of each other and then, beautiful sequential adoptions after the first batch of kiddies, it was easy to be tempted to let the hamster wheel of life take over with busyness and get so used to the busy life that we forgot to stop to really smell the flowers (can you tell I am a flower/nature lover). So, my mission and passion was to always make purposeful space to praise God for the obvious heavenly goodness that exploded all around me in our garden of life that bloomed with such beauty amidst all the craziness….and this blog was created to record the blessings within all that amazing chaos! I knew if I stopped to breathe long enough to record our memories and record our journey, then I would not miss the opportunities to be in the moment and just savor the goodness…… honetly, I felt in control….
Then Life shattered into a million pieces…and our garden was demolished. My castle was attacked. All control, or mirage of control was destroyed.
When you lose a child, all you can see is a wasteland where there was once such vibrancy.
Life on this side of April 22, 2018 is so very pulverized, so colorless. Some days it feels like there is barren land all around us that screams death and defeat.
How do you keep walking forward in such a wilderness when you’ve had to let go of your child and their sweet smell and touch and voice? When your every comfort, every feeling of control and happiness and wholeness and every fall-back tool that you were accustomed to using to “fix things” just gets raptured out from in front of you… This kind of broken can not be fixed or cured this side of heaven….it can only be faced and embraced and honored and labored through to birth something wild and new …. it is a brokenness that is not meaningless, though it sure feels like it many days. How could there ever be meaning in burying your child?
Our natural hearts and eyes and souls were not built to understand such agonizing mysteries. He is God and we are not.
This side of life requires a new lens to see past the destruction of life that happened on the day we had to say goodbye to our beautiful 6 year old baby girl and each day that we have to feel her painful absence in such agonizing gut and heart punches. What once felt like a life that reflected the perfection of heaven with all its abounding growth and favor and goodness (seriously, sometimes I had to pinch myself because it felt so very dreamy)…. now feels like a deep wilderness that lays barren and ravaged by a battle that we did not win. We lost.
So much loss.
But. each day I pray for strength to face the darkness and rise to face the coming sunrise and I remember that Jesus did win…. He is our coming sunrise when life feels like your sun has been hijacked from your blue skies.
I pray for peeks behind the veil to see how this terrible pain is working for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs all earthly suffering.
I try to remember to put on the lens of TRUTH when I go fetal, between the gut punches…I reach for a lens that I did not have to wear often in my old life or even need for that matter. But, now…this is a lens that saves my life daily. A Lens that says HEAVEN HAS ALREADY WON. Jesus won the battle. Our loss will be our forever gain in heaven.
We have to wait…. wait in a broken garden.
Because He is not done unfolding miracles and redemption.
He is redeeming this broken garden…. restoring LIFE to this dark desert. He is growing WILD seeds of HOPE within the depths of our wasteland.
I fight to SEE the wild growth that is produced from this affliction.
I cling each day to the UNSEEN …. I fight to believe for what is promised and not for what is SEEN. I believe for a new WILD beauty to rise from the depths of the barren landscape.
I cling to TRUTH when I can not see Truth. I believe psalm 23 that says HE chases us down with His GOODNESS, even deep down in the valley of the shadow of death.
I believe and feel Him carrying us as He promises in Is. 41:10
I believe for restoration, even when I can not see beyond the ruins.
I believe in God’s providence, even when the story is so painful…
I believe in Wrestling my Jesus to make a way to my Hope…
I believe in the power of lament and grief as a pathway to eventual praise.
I believe in you, my God… in YOUR POWER and YOUR words, PLEASE help my unbelief!!!
I believe there are no shortcuts through the wasteland of grief and one must travel through an unnavigated land at their own pace…. You can not rush a pathway through such holy ground. The grief must be honored, not ignored. You can not experience redemption until you embrace crucifixion….. You can not experience God’s restoration without facing the pain…
Our Jesus leads the way for us. He shows us the path to walk in the wasteland. He made a way through our desert, straight to our Wild Hope…
…to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace…
Luke 1:79
….from an agonizing prayer in a broken garden of Gethsemane as Luke describes: ” being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”….
…bleeding and pleading for This cup to be taken from Him…. to a surrendering and torturous ascent up a hill to calvary, falling and limping under the weight of His cross and our sin, enduring the flogging and the beatings from the Roman soldiers till His skin was shredded and literally falling off…to a rugged cross where he endured 9 inch nails hammered through his hands, forearms and feet. And, there He hung in torture to await death and experienced His greatest midnight of HIS soul: the absolute rejection from God, His father….and right there He bled right to death for you and for me……. His heart broke for us, so we would know a way through our wilderness to a treasure called HOPE. Listen to how Jesus suffered for love…. listen to this medical understanding, from Mark Eastmen, of how your eternity was purchased:
-Mark Eastmen
Over a period of several hours the combination of collapsing lungs, a failing heart, dehydration, and the inability to get adequate oxygen supplies to the tissues cause the eventual death of the victim. The victim, in effect, cannot breath properly and slowly suffocates to death. In cases of severe cardiac stress, such as crucifixion, a victim’s heart can even burst. This process is called “Cardiac Rupture.” Therefore it could be said that Jesus died of a “broken heart!”
Jesus is acquainted with our sorrows. He knows our broken hearts intimately. If His death is not a picture of walking deep grief, I don’t know what is.
Death. All death…..To a garden tomb of darkness where the world waited and wondered if ALL Hope was actually gone. No sight of redemption, no HOPE seen… just tears and anger and disappointment from the world….darkness….despair….ruins and wasteland.
but oh that glorious SUNDAY! …that glorious Easter Sunday where the rock was rolled away and JESUS WAS RISEN!!! He arrested death once and for all and was REDEEMED to perfection. He was resurrected ……
WILD RECKLESS HOPE SEEN!! A victory that gives our broken hearts a new reason to keep bravely beating forward….
Jesus BLED FOR HOPE for US. He entered the pain of this world. He bravely stared it down like a lion stares down it’s prey before ravaging it to pieces and HE SWALLOWED DEATH once and for all
THIS IS WILD HOPE. Wild HOPE birthed through the bloody pain of grief and love.
He is acquainted with all our sorrows.
Jesus shows us how to love, He shows us how to grieve. He shows us the way to our WILD HOPE. This way is a broken way…. through a broken HOPE. The pain must be felt. It can not be avoided or pressed down or numbed.. It must be felt and allowed to move through our souls.
The pain must be allowed to bleed out, so the seeds of Hope can be nourished and fed to produce a wild glory for the Kingdom.
Jesus did not avoid pain, so we could have HOPE.
In all the ruins, in all the pain, in all the wasteland, I ache to trust the Master Gardener who can bring LIFE from death and I long and I live and I look for glimpses of the glorious day when all things will be made NEW.
I am a hunter of HOPE Unseen. I am a forever seeker of the glimpses of my promised Eternal Spring
THIS…. This photo of us ALL together, made whole is my Spring.
This picture is my promised unseen HOPE: ALL THINGS NEW!
…..If you are still leaning in… I would love to keep sharing my heart about how we hold both the heartache and the HOPE. … you can read it here
We walk between two worlds. We now live in this unexplainable tension, this Saturday of our souls… awaiting our Sunday. The day where the world goes dark….Though there is still the miracle of Goodness in the land of the Living, there is much grief too. And, navigating that pathway through this wilderness is hard… HARD!
Living with a HUGE heart hole….
Each day is lived both wrestling the heart of God while also unearthing wild Hope as we fight forward in faith after the traumatic loss of our precious brave and spunky, 6 year heat warrior- daughter, Gianna Lilyfaith on April 22,2018.
The night never felt so dark.
You can read her story here
…..we walk forward changed forever.
We carry our baby with us every day as we live with our broken hearts deeply anchored to heaven, while walking, dancing and crawling this broken garden in a NEW light of our eternal purpose.
We are letting God grow New wild life around our giant size Gia hole….
… Her life grows our life forever.
Her heartbeat is a forever song in our hearts to bravely walk in HOPE and in FIRE and Wild Risk. Gianna came to us through the jump of wild risk out in the deep, and that is where we desire to live out our days on earth….not settling for normal or status quo since comfort is no longer in our vocabulary.
Our Gia-Bia teaches us how to keep growing and how to stay wide open and daring as we set our eyes on what we cannot see. She has taught us so much about being brave, keeping faith, living out in the DEEP and turning to face the greatest darkness, while positioning ourselves for the coming SUN-rise. She teaches us about all the Lemon-Joy! in all the things that feel so bitter and sour. Her forever life passionately propels us forward into an eternal purpose in all we do.
She teaches us how to live BRAVE and BIG with a broken earthly heart.
Our tiny missionary’s heartbeat reflects the WILD HOPE of heaven!
She teaches us about a unconditional HOPE that does not waiver…. a Hope that is always worth the risk of stepping out in to the broken world. Hope and Love that can not help but to bring growth of beauty around the deep ache of loss. She teaches about a GOD who rescues us each day and will one day Right all the wrongs of this terrible world. The One Who will one day Restore all that is broken.
Our Gia-Bia. She is forever carried. Forever remembered. Forever LOVED. Her miracles go on FOREVER and she grows us forever.
We will never tire of declaring of the miracles of Life that have been birthed from her beautiful eternal life and the light that reflects from our HOPE in the depths of the wilderness.
Hope is an anchor, But hope does not replace pain. Hope does not numb pain. Hope walks with pain and blazes a trail through the desert of destruction.
TRUE Hope is born from the depths of suffering.
The mark of death and tragedy on our lives makes the Truth of hers and our Eternal Life realer than ever before. Our hearts sing a new song, a night song that grows from the lamenting of our souls and has become the rescue that saves us from the pit of despair.
It’s all so messy, so hard and not okay and not reconcilable. Life is a rollercoaster of emotions. And HOPE is a blazing torch in the darkest pit, but HOPE is not a cure for pain. There is no explaining such a holy aching mystery.
Hope does not dismiss pain, however Hope gives pain a purpose. Pain is a gift when you allow it to help you see your need for a healer. To see your need for a RESCUE. Pain has grown my faith….However, With that said, I would trade this gift and growth any day to have my baby back in my arms. My soul needs wholeness. I was meant for a restored Garden, not a broken one. We all were made for Eden, and we will always crave how it is SUPPOSED TO BE. That is just the honest truth… oh how I wish I could go back to that life before I had to wrestle such truths and be stripped of all happiness and comfort and feel the weight of a broken world in such an agonizing and tangible way. I need Jesus more than ever before, but oh how I wish I could go back to the simple faith of not needing Him as much…..
This is the faith that is born in the fire, and this faith hurts like hell….
I need Jesus. I just need JESUS.
WE NEED JESUS….
Jesus…. Jesus. The one who bled in a garden and lamented to God over this broken world too. The one who is acquainted with all our sorrows and our torture and cries with us.
The one who defeated death and walked out of a garden tomb to declare the battle was WON once and for all.
Jesus knew the ending, but He still wept when his friends wept and grieved their loss…
Jesus aches with us, so we are free to ache in our broken Springs and our Broken gardens on earth…even though we HAVE the joy of HOPE…. We have pain. So please, do not throw the word HOPE at someone and expect them suddenly smile and feel better and rise up! Sorrow will not be replaced by HOPE…..not until heaven. So, I challenge you to go low and dig for hope through the pathway of pain with them. Feel pain with them in the darkest dark so you can make room for God to unleash the light.
JOY AND SORROW are a package deal, you can not fully embrace one without holding the other. We grieve to the level that we love. Grieve with those who grieve. Mourn with those who mourn.
Joy and sorrow will always walk hand in hand straight into eternity..where sorrow gets kicked to the curb and only JOY remains.
I am Holding on… But when I can not hold on, He holds tighter.
There is a Rescuer of LIGHT coming!
He left a garden at midnight where he anguished in blood and sweat and the next day He crawled up a torturing hill to calvary and was killed and buried in the deep darkness of garden tomb. But, GOD was not done! The story did not end at that hellish chapter. He walked out of a tomb of death and overcame death for good!!! He restores all that is BROKEN. The story is not done.
HE IS OUR WILD HOPE!
He is restoring a NEW garden where all that is wrong will be made right one day! Read for yourself, it is all in the book of Revelations, chapter 22.
Our Faithful GOD IS NOT DONE, even when we can’t SEE beyond these terrible pages of grief.
In our suffering and in our broken garden, Let’s wail and weep and honor both the pain and the Hope coming! I pray that you will journey with my family in this space to look for light in the darkness, to trust a God who fiercely hunts us down with goodness in the land of the living while walking the valley of the shadow of death. I write to unearth Hope from a wilderness valley…
**To read more about WHY I am deeply convicted to WRITE from the wilderness, see this post…. This is where I write my heart on the vision God has given me to write the story He is unfolding. The grit and the glory are both recorded….***
Let’s hold on and unearth a WILD HOPE together!
a Wildflower HOPE!
The Lord will surely comfort Zion
and will look with compassion on all her ruins;
he will make her deserts like Eden,
her wastelands like the garden of the Lord.
Joy and gladness will be found in her,
thanksgiving and the sound of singing.
Isaiah 51:3
*** To learn more about our story, you can listen to our podcast interview here****–