Tag: losses

New Year Hope Breathers

Trudy Den Hoed30 Comments

Were you devastated from heartaches or losses of one kind or another as you closed out 2022? Has it continued into 2023? I’m so sorry. No matter what you’re suffering, I pray God strengthens you with His measureless grace and pours His peace into Your hurting heart.

🦋 “God has a heart. And it hurts.
Not with just a few drops of ache,
not just with a slow drip of sadness —
His whole massive heart fills, swells,
burns with this raw, relentless pain.”
~ Ann Voskamp

God’s Grace Is Immeasurable

❤️❤️❤️
“So here’s what I’ve learned through it all:
Leave all your cares and anxieties at the feet of the Lord,
and measureless grace will strengthen you.”
Psalm 55:22 TPT

As I look back to 2022, God truly has been generous with His boundless love and His all-sufficient grace. Does that mean it was free sailing without any struggles? Not at all.

There will always be trials on this earth, but God has promised His measureless grace to get through them. I am such a worrier and feel so helpless to “fix” things, but God is infinitely patient with me. I continue this life-long learning process of more deeply trusting God and leaving all worries and troubles in His Hands. To repeatedly surrender my heart and past, present, and future life and that of others to Him and His faithful love and infinite and powerful grace. To remember to relinquish the things I can’t change and to believe they are better off in God’s hands than mine. But also to seek His wisdom, guidance, and strength to have courage to make a difference wherever He places me.

❤️❤️❤️
“The Lord Himself goes before you
and will be with you; 
He will never leave you nor forsake you. 
Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.“
Deuteronomy 31:8

Nature Retreat

I’m so grateful to receive photos from warmer climates during these cold and snowy winter months! The first 6 photos are of Arizona birds from my brother. 🙂 The rest of the photos are ones my niece took recently on her trip to Hawaii to visit her daughter who lives on the Big Island and studies and rescues sea turtles. 🙂

American Robin
Bridled Titmouse
Hermit Thrush
Arizona Woodpecker
Acorn Woodpecker
Burrowing Owls
Love this view with the lighthouse!
Another Ocean View
Sea Turtles
Green Sea Turtles
Waimea Canyon

2021 Reflections on the Grace God Still Gives Us

Trudy Den Hoed37 Comments

2021 has been a tough year, hasn’t it? Most likely, for all of us in one way or another. Physically, mentally, and emotionally taxing. Losses of different kinds. Deep hurts in so many hearts. Uncertainties and fears about the future.

But God… Yes. But God is still with us and is giving us grace to survive. Even when we feel forsaken. Even when we feel weary, troubled, and sorrowful. Even when events in our lives or in the world have crushed us. He is still holding us up with His faithful love and compassion that will never, ever leave us.

This year God is teaching me on a deeper level how crucial it is to:

🦋 Remind my fainting heart to keep my eyes fixed on God’s unchangeable character. All the heartaches and changes in our world may disorient us or depress us, but God will never change and His love will never abandon us.

🌈 “Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet My unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor My covenant of peace be removed, says the LORD, who has compassion on you.” Isaiah 54:10 NIV

🦋 Let go of my tight-fisted grip of “needing to fix” situations out of my control. This is so hard to do, isn’t it? But God longs for us to leave these anxieties in His Almighty hands and to believe in His power to heal, redeem, and bring justice in His time and way.

🌈 “This is what the Lord says: Do not be afraid! Don’t be discouraged by this mighty army, for the battle is not yours, but God’s.” 2 Chronicles 20:15 NLT

🦋 Diligently seek, pay attention to, and thank God for the beauty and the blessings still surrounding me. There are so many blessings right in front of us that we take for granted each moment, right? The beauty in God’s creation, the strength we’re given with each breath and step we take (whether emotionally, physically, mentally, or spiritually), the kindness and love many people still do show. And on and on it goes. Even in the midst of chaos and heartaches, God still heaps on the invaluable gift of His grace so freely.

🌈 “And from the overflow of His fullness we received grace heaped upon more grace!” John 1:16 TPT

What has been the toughest trial to you personally this year? What special grace have you been given even in the midst of it, whether in the moment or in hindsight?

God’s Lens of Love and Grace Overcomes Satan’s Vicious Lies That God Doesn’t Care

Trudy Den Hoed26 Comments

“See what great love the Father
has lavished on us, that we should
be called children of God! 
And that is what we are!”
1 John 3:1

That is what we are? Children of God? Yes! God is a Father who will never, ever hurt us like earthly fathers sometimes do. He delights in us, so deeply that Jesus came to suffer and die in our place. Willingly. Lovingly. Lavishly.

Do you ever feel like you know this in your head, but your heart sometimes struggles to believe it? Your legs feel too rubbery to get up and move forward and receive this truth He so freely offers? Your hands feel too weak to take hold of His proffered hand of love and grace? Especially in times of vulnerability when Satan pummels us with his vicious lies and stomps us under his feet?

Believe me, Satan knows where we’re most vulnerable. Terminal or chronic illness can sap our energy. Depression and other mental illnesses can suck us down, down, down into a deep, dark hole where we lose hope and can’t see a speck of light anymore to lead us out. Losses of so many kinds can make us wonder where God is. Loss of self and devastation of lives through abuse or other traumas. The death of loved ones. Betrayals. Desertions. Divisions. Loss of jobs and financial means. The pandemic and all its repercussions. And on and on it goes. And Satan stalks as a hungry and determined lion watching, waiting, and pouncing on us when we’re weak and vulnerable.

© TheLovelyScribe

When we’re discouraged, we become an easy target, and it can be harder to fight off those negative voices of never being enough. Those critical voices that say we’re unlovable, unwanted, and surely not needed in this world. Those vicious voices that say Jesus does not care and there is no hope or help for us.

Satan knows exactly when our bodies or souls are weary and feeling too weak to hang onto God’s truth. He sometimes convinces us to look through our lens of skewed perspectives because of past or present trauma and hurting words and actions that can drown out the remembrance of our identity in Christ Jesus. He doesn’t want us to look through the lens of truth that we are Jesus’ beloved, that Jesus cares so deeply, and He is with us no matter how difficult our struggles are.

Recently, I was looking through that distorted lens before I even realized it. My heart became so heavy, and I couldn’t understand why. Help me, Jesus! I turned to the One who knows and understands the deepest troubles of our hearts. The One who cries with us and longs for us to release our burdens into His hands.

And He graciously opened one of His promises to me:

“The God of peace will soon
crush Satan under your feet.
The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you!”
Romans 16:20

Yes, Jesus in His powerful love and grace has already gained the victory over Satan, but as long as we’re on earth, Satan will try his utmost to bring us to doubt that truth. The grace of Jesus will always be with us here and help us through the heaviest trial, but won’t that be a glorious day when Satan will forever be crushed under our feet?!

If we hear condemning or shaming voices, it’s not God. God may sometimes lead us in a way of correction out of love, but He will never condemn us even when we fail or fall. Even though He knows that in our weakness, we sometimes do take up those distorted lens Satan digs up and gives us. He can and will remove those lens and again give us His lens of love and grace. The lens He sees us through. His lovable and wanted child who is needed in this world to spread the same love He gives us to others.

“So now there is no condemnation
for those who belong to Christ Jesus.”
Romans 8:1

“The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying:
‘I have loved you with an everlasting love;
 I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.'”
Jeremiah 31:3