By Janean
So many choices! Have you ever sat down and thought about all the different choices you make in a day? The opportunity to make choices started back at the beginning when God told Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:16-17, “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: BUT of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die.”) Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and ate of the fruit from the tree. (Genesis 3:6, “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.”) That was the beginning of the end, when sin and destruction, heartache and pain, entered this world.
Every day of our lives we have choices to make. During good and bad days, we are in control of our choices in all things that are placed in our path. When God took Hannah, my husband and I made a choice, together, that no matter what, we will continue to serve our Lord. We have shared many things showing how we have stayed faithful to that choice, and how He has stayed faithful to us. However, I want to share that this choice still is not easy to swallow at times. I have had conversations with people who have read our posts or have watched us from afar. They think that we look like we are doing pretty well, everything must be fine with us, and we must have “moved on.” Well, I want to be completely honest with you, we still struggle with our loss. From my perspective, we will struggle forever with losing Hannah. Nowhere are we ever saying that any of this is easy.
We are celebrating Christmas this week. Everyone is in high gear, racing around getting everything ready for their family get-togethers. Even I am working to make our Christmas get-together special for our family, but that’s what all this work is for, the family. My heart is not in any of it. It’s so hard to look at our tree and not think of Hannah. I see her ornaments and other ornaments that have all four of our children together, and I’m reminded that things will never be the same again. I see her bright smiling face as she would have loved helping us decorate the tree. Her stocking hangs over our fireplace, but it’s empty. When I walk outside, I hear her laughter in the crunching snow beneath my feet. This past week, I made Chocolate Pumpkin Bread, which was one of Hannah’s favorites, and the smell brought memories back to me of Hannah asking if I could make more for her co-workers.
I know and believe the true reason for Christmas is Christ’s birth. That should be why we are coming together. With God and His strength, I choose to get up each morning, complete the tasks for the day, and keep moving forward. When I am up in the night, what do I choose to do? Wallow in my self-pity and allow myself to become depressed, or do I reach for my Bible and pray? Each night is different. When I am asked to do something that causes me to have to rehearse the events of that dreadful week of losing Hannah, do I close myself off and hide in my bed, or do I take the opportunity to share the love of God through Hannah’s story? I choose to find the good in the pain and loss. I choose to work through my sorrow by finding someone else who is hurting and try to help them find Jesus and mend their breaking heart. When I hear of someone else’s burden being answered in a “humanly” positive way, I choose to rejoice with them. Our struggles and burdens do not represent us, but our choices do.
We all have a choice. We have a choice to go our own way, to handle our hardships with our own strength, to live our lives the way we want to live them. This direction may look pleasing, full of hope and happiness, and fulfillment of everything we want. But, if, or when that one day comes that shakes us to the core, where we lose our wealth, our health, or even our loved one, what do we have to lean on? Stop and think, who are you serving today? Yourself or God?
Joshua 24:15, “…choose you this day whom you will serve; …as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” Ultimately, this should be our daily cry whatever comes our way. It has not always been easy, but we continue to choose to do right, breathe, take small steps, and keep moving forward.
We are blessed.
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