Christmas Newsletter 2017
Every year I continue Mark’s pre marriage tradition and write a year in review Christmas Newsletter.  We send it off to nearly 170 people and I so desired for it to be filled with the word I am choosing for this year….”HOPE”!  In case you’re not on that list, I wanted to make sure you get a chance to read it here. It was quite a daunting job to deliver the terrible blows we have faced, but the Holy Spirit, my counselor, showed up for me!!  Thank you God for inspiring hope and grace and overwhelming us with your presence and love through this jaw dropping, heart wrenching year!  You have always been faithful and I have no doubt you will remain!

Greetings Family & Friends,
I am starting this newsletter off with a quote, which very much applies to our year. “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it?” from C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed.
In Twenty Seventeen, like no year previous, we are hanging over that precipice! We are witness bearers to the fact that our God continues to prove Himself faithful, over and over again, and in our time of greatest need. He is the rope and HOW STRONG HE IS! He has held onto us and is holding us up, I can say with a reverent and grateful heart! Oh, how He can be trusted, no matter what He allows in the natural order of things here on earth. And how He has made a way for us, for all who trust in His name!
It all started in February for me. I read a book called “The Broken Way” by Ann VosKamp. After describing multiple incidents of suffering and loss, she posed the question “What on earth do we do with our one broken heart in this world?” We all have felt the sting of this world’s brokenness. We’ve all been the recipient of it and we’ve certainly all given it! The answer. Become Cruciform, like a cross. Well how does one do that….? In her words, we give good brokenness for bad brokenness. There is no greater example of this than the cross of Christ. He paid a debt we can never repay! The redemption of our souls for His shed blood. Good brokenness for bad brokenness. So we have this example to follow in times of suffering and loss, in times of great despair and pain, in times of unbelievable circumstances. We “give it forward” to a broken world. Good brokenness for bad brokenness. Undeserved love. Acts of Kindness with no strings attached. Contagious generosity. We start a ripple effect of good things. We do good things! This affects change. This affects hope. This affects LOVE, which is the very character of God Himself.
In April I received a phone call that my dearly loved brother, Shaun, who struggled with addiction for many years, was dead. We would find out until months later that it was, as suspected, an accidental overdose. Our hearts were broken in a hundred pieces that day, but our hope lies on the other side of this life, in eternity, with God Almighty, when He makes everything right!!! Shaun completed Life Challenge in 2006, which is where he turned his life over to Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. After he graduated the program in 2007, poor choices, unresolved worked through pain, and a slow fade into familiar habits, led him to begin using on and off again. We made a decision, with very strict boundaries and rules, to allow him to live with us, which lasted for 7 months in 2015-2016. We are so very grateful for the time and memories we had with him! The boys got to know him and vice versa. He got to witness a women in pregnancy and all that came with that…! He was amazed that Ruby was in my belly one day and here on earth the next, as a precious tiny thing, with a fresh new life. I’m glad he got to see beautiful parts of God’s creation in this world. It is also a comfort to know that we did everything possible to encourage him to travel a different road, than the one we feared would end in this way. I look forward, with great anticipation, to the day of reunion, because I know I will see him again! I miss him every day!
Only four days later, while in Florida, my beloved Dad died, but only in his earthly form. He had been enjoying the pool and soaking up the sunshine and the creator of it! As a complication of lung cancer, my Dad got a blood clot that went from his leg to his lung, and needed to be hospitalized, to get control of it. After several weeks in the hospital he was moved to a rehab facility where he finally began to improve and we were hopeful and expecting for a safe return home. The nurses say the loss of my brother impacted the healing process and caused his body to give out. I will never forget our daily phone conversations in those last weeks of his life. We also talked a lot about Heaven after we believed Shaun to be there. My Dad believed on King Jesus also, after an undeniable experience in 1996, when the Lord answered his search for who was the “higher power”. He was in AA at the time, and put this question out there “If there is a God, reveal yourself to me, because I don’t believe it’s this pen I’m holding here”? My Dad was divinely directed to read the bible that had been sitting under a seat in his van. Since my Dad needed signs and wonders, the date he was directed to do this was on the exact date, only seven years earlier, that the bible had been written in and given to him! The verse that caught his attention to the answer to his prayer was John 6:44 where Jesus said “For no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them to me, and at the last day I will raise them up.” This began a new obsession. He was on a quest and began seeking for truth and the answers to the big questions of life. He found them in God’s word and a personal relationship with the living God Himself! I know where my Dad is right now. He is in the presence of His perfect Heavenly Father, and Shaun, and they are truly at peace now! All of his questions are answered and understood in full, forevermore. No more pain, no more suffering, no more sorrow to face EVER again (Rev 21: 1-7). My hope is anchored in all of God’s promises of eternity and none greater than this fact that there will be no more suffering and separation! I know as long as God gives me breathe that I still have work to do here, but I can’t wat to see them too!
Adding sorrow upon sorrows, in August, Mark, my dearly loved and adored husband, and father to our four beautiful children, was diagnosed with a metastatic cancer. It started in the Bile Duct of the liver, and has traveled to his bones. With man, there is no cure, but nothing trumps the power of God except the sovereignty of God. Although we know God has given us all of time in eternity, through the redeeming blood of Jesus, we hope and pray daily for a miracle and an extension of years for Mark for the here and now!! Whether the creator chooses to do so is yet to be known. The process has been quite difficult and painful but what we have experienced here, in this dreaded place, is nothing short of the miraculous already! We have been the recipients of acts of kindness and generosity that overwhelm us to the point of tears. Love and prayers and expressions of all kinds, have been and continue to be, poured out to us to overflowing! We are being carried in this storm. We are being cared for like no other time in our lives. This does ease the day to day burdens we must bear and is a testament to the goodness of God to us individually and to our family. We are blessed far more than we deserve!!
Although, we walk this journey with all of you, it is mostly between ourselves and God. You see, this journey is each our own, and we travel it either with or without acknowledging the Giver of it. Imagine that! The creation not acknowledging the creator! We would never stand for it in our businesses, successes, or pursuits. We all fill our life with something. If not God, then substitutes, and even the faithful believer can do so. We could each fill in the blank here with every manner of things we use to medicate a wounded soul. Satan has given us many options in this world. I have found and I do dare say that nothing will satisfy, none but Jesus, in the here and now, and definitely in the after! Eternity is calling and coming closer each day and we just aren’t given the date after the dash, which will be on each of our headstones for none of us will make it out of here alive. Some might say “Too serious, Shannon”. It’s been a very serious year! So, are you ready? Mark and I are clothed and washed in the blood of Jesus, which is the only thing that makes us ready! It’s the only thing that can make any of us ready (Romans 3:21-26). One day, all our idols will be proved to be a house of cards. In this life, they will fall during times of trial and adversity, which is promised to come, and they will certainly all fall in the next, if not bulldozed down here.
I recently heard this: Life is not made up of the dreams that you dream, but of the choices that you make. Clearly, none of us is in control here. Our family is certainly between “The Rock and a hard place”. We didn’t ever think life would bring us a year like this! We have choices to make every day, sometimes hourly, and sometimes minute by minute. What, whom, are we going to put our hope and trust in this day? I don’t always choose rightly. I know, by personal experience, our creator to be the wooing and longing kind. He beckons me to draw near, to spend time with Him in His presence and in His word. Why? So He can scold me and tell me how I’m screwing up here and there? I used to think so. But NO, it just isn’t so! The reason is simply because He loves me. He loves me and He wants me to know it. He desires to speak to my hurting heart because HE IS LOVE. He is jealous for me, for you! All the idols I put before Him and yet He loves me still? Why? How? He wants me. He wants you! He created me, He created you, for a love relationship, to know Him and to make Him known to a broken, bruised, battered, and deeply hurting world. To give good brokenness for bad brokenness and He does it through us. Most days, I still have to reconcile with this fact. My Dad and brother are presently on the other side of this place. Their time here is up. I will not see them again…here! In my original shock I kept asking this question “That’s all they get”? 39 years? 64 years? They were here and now they’re not. Yet, they left a mark. Some very good, some not so good, like will be said of all of us, for we are all damaged by our sin and the sins of others. The big picture is this, death came into the world by the consequences of the fall of man, the fall of you and me. (Genesis & Romans 5:12) Yes, that is a part of the bad brokenness we have to deal with here. BUT, by the consequences of another man, God’s son, Lord Jesus, whosoever shall believe, have been pardoned! Our debt has been PAID IN FULL. Jesus left His heavenly home, to make a way for ANY and ALL who would believe and come to Him. The creator entered our broken world through His creation, the womb of a women (like we all do), to a dirty manger, to an agonizing death on a cross, to a stinking grave, to a glorious promised resurrection, and back to Heaven, which is where He is interceding for us to the Father, at this very moment, and where He is preparing a place for us, for all eternity, for all those who believe! I can follow a God like that!! There is no God like my God, King Jesus!!
I leave you with this. About a week after Mark’s diagnosis, my question to God was this “Why Mark, I need you to show me something”. He answered me this “My child, the suffering you have endured in your one life, my son bore all that suffering on that cross, and not just for you, but for all of humanity, for all of time, and ALL FOR LOVE!!! You can know this truth also, in whatever comes your way for the remainder of your days here. My response… “I am undone, LORD, all my questions are laid to rest here at the foot of the cross, I praise you for WHO you are”. My God is good and He has proven it, once and for all time. The greatest sacrifice ever made on our behalf, happened 2017 years ago!!! No matter what comes in this life, this fact is unchangeable, it is unshakable! So in this year two thousand seventeen anno domino, and every year after, I will praise the name of The Lord and glorify Him forevermore!!!
For updates on Mark and our family you can go to www.markmyhope.com
“I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”
― C.S. Lewis