Tristan's brick

Sundays, as you can imagine, are very hard for us because Tristan passed away on a Sunday afternoon. Fortunately, church gets us out of our house and into the Lords, where we are uplifted. This morning in Sunday School one of our care leaders called me up to the front and presented us with this memorial brick that reads "Tristan Asher Hostetter, 56 days". What a great surprise! Yvette and I were just talking the other day about having Tristan remembered in some way at our church. Right outside the main auditorium of our church is a granite memorial wall for the unborn where name plates call to mind all of the little ones that never made it to this world and in front of that is a brick paved walkway which displays names of little ones that did make it but left all too soon. This pathway is where Tristan's brick will lay in honor of our sweet little boy. We appreciate this brick more than words can even describe.

With brick in tow, we made our way to the morning service that God had especially prepared for us. Dr. Brunson taught from Exodus chapter 15 verse 25. The Lord had led the Israelites out of captivity and had brought them through the Red Sea. They had just experienced one of the greatest miracles of the Old Testament and yet three short days later they found themselves at the waters of Marah in need of fresh water to drink with only a bitter pool before them. Verse 25b ... and there the Lord tested them. The pastor went on to explain that this test wasn't because of disobedience, but rather in order to determine if God's people were going to trust Him with their every need. The interesting part was that the people in just three days had, for all intensive purposes, forgotten the miracle parting of the sea. They watched their Creator peel back millions of gallons of water, flash dry the muddy sea bed so it would support their weight and that of their supplies and livestock. They saw the entire Egyptian army, those that beat them and mistreated them for their entire lives drown before their very eyes as the walls of water fell back into place. You would think they would have been able to trust Him to provide the very basic of needs such as water to drink? How quickly we can jump to conclusions because here we are the other side of Tristan's miraculous 56 days and God is asking us to trust Him with the very same thing; to be all that we require, to be our sustenance, our sufficiency. It seems simple doesn't it? He just brought us through the part that should have been the hardest to trust Him in right? Well, not necessarily.

Tonight was another service I believe the Lord had especially prepared for us. Our pastor spoke of the life of Joseph in Genesis, and how sometimes it takes years for us to see how the hand of God moves to bring His plan into fruition. How the testing that we experience in the valleys of life prepare us for God's appointed time and place. Once there, we can look back and see how God was working through every situation, every detail, to bring about His best for our lives. Yvette and I spend a good bit of time looking back over the past 17 years, now, having a different perspective, we see how His hand has moved and this gives us the peace we so desperately long for to make it through this time.

Thank you for all of your comments and encouragement. They are often read more than once.

Please continue to pray for our family as we approach Wednesday the 27th.

Trayc