"Have you considered my servant Job?"

Job 1:8
And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?"


I know lots and lots of Christians talk about Job and how they admire him and wish they could be just like him, some of us even just use him and the story to relate to just about anybody or anything.  And I (Anna) prayed quite a bit about using Job in this, but I really believe that God has laid his story on my heart for this year.  


So, that last time we blogged we basically caught everyone up on the heartache we had just been through with all this door closing business.  No Salt Lake, no Chicago...but a yes to Omaha.  Here we are, hanging out in Omaha and absolutely falling back in love with this place.  We've moved into our new place (which we are sub-leasing from friends who are out of state for the next 5 months for schooling) and love it!  We've even got laundry shoots, SO GREAT!  Anyway.  It's been a tough road trying to get on the uphill after everything that had just happened.  No SLC, no Chicago, no jobs, no money, and we were frantic about a place to live.  But!  We had a God who blessed us when we definitely didn't deserve it.  
  
 Anywho, Jared was re-hired back at Jimmy Johns and then was hired at a place called Urban Plunge where he was a facilitator for youth groups and/or small groups to experience Omaha and it's inner city ministries.  He loved that job especially,  and it was a total God-send for him to have that outlet.  God blessed us with this house for only $450 a month, and how that money came in was only by His doing.  God blessed us with new friends who knew that we were going through and offered us help in grieving through that and laid out another opportunity for us.  I probably won't get into that particular opportunity much in this post.  Wait for the next posting!


So needless to say, we felt like we were finally on the beginnings of an uphill and figured we've been through a lot and we probably have nothing else unfortunate to happen...any time soon.


A little back story here in order to help the next part of our story - Jared and myself have been very prayerful in the past year and even before we were married about a family.  We knew that getting married to each other also meant that we would be in positions to be parents one day.  So for about the first 7 months of our marriage I (Anna) was using these little dudes we women like to call, "The Pill".  In December, Jared and myself prayed and fasted and knew God was telling us it was time to be rid of those pills.  And we obeyed that calling. So more or less, Jared and I were ready and willing to God blessing us with a little one whenever He felt we were ready.


In July, we found out that we were expecting!  So what did we do??  Well, DUH! We told everyone!  We were so excited and couldn't wait to be parents!  But for some odd reason...in the back of my mind and behind scenes, something just didn't feel right.  My heart was very troubled for the first 3 weeks that we were pregnant and adjusting our lives around it that something was just wrong about this pregnancy.  I didn't tell anyone because I believed it was just me being a paranoid first time mom....but that intuition just wouldn't go away.  Anyway...
So just yesterday Jared and I were heading back to Omaha after a weekend in Wisconsin on vacation with my family.  That morning I noticed some spotting and some pretty intense cramps, nothing out of the ordinary, but they were there.  So we called to doctor and were reassured that nothing was wrong...  That was until we made our next pit stop before getting into Omaha and I noticed that something was very, very wrong.  I went to the bathroom and noticed somethings that were extremely abnormal and knew we need to get to the emergency room quick.  At that point the cramps were severe and the bleeding had gone beyond what was normal.  Jared and I have never been so heartbroken, scared, confused and anxious in our lives.
  We got to the hospital ER and after 2 hours of testing and blood work the doctors told Jared and I that we miscarried.  We were only 8 weeks along...  August 16th will forever be a date which is ingrained in our memories.  This is hard for me (Anna) to even be sitting here and watching the words being typed onto the computer screen....after finding this out barely even 24 hours ago.  I have never experienced such heartbreak over a child that I had not even met.  We had to say goodbye before we could say hello.  


   At this point the only thing Jared and I could do was pray.  I've never been so tempted in my life to be angry with God and throw up some nasty words and be done with my services to Him.  But at the same time, I knew that if I were to do that I would be more dead inside than I was feeling even then.  Somehow, throughout my whole ER visit I was able to be composed, calm, and sturdy enough to be on page with the doctors.  It was ONLY by God that I was able to hold it together.  And what was even more amazing was that I had this partial understanding and peace!  "WHY?! or HOW?!" one might ask.  God.  Jared and I prayed so, SO hard that God would give us understanding and that our faith would be strong and not shaken.  We asked Him to take away any anger and help us to see that He knows us better than we know ourselves and that He knows what He is doing.


  We were encouraged by some friends of ours to go ahead and give our baby a name as so to see that the baby was a human and not just an "it".  S0 last night Jared and I gave what we believed would have been our daughter the name, Leena Marie.  We believe that God has her now and that we will one day get to meet her.  This morning I was laying in bed and asked God if He could tell baby Leena Marie that mommy and daddy say hello, and that we love her so much.  We also said that one day we would love to meet her.  And I can't even begin to tell you the amount of peace that the Lord has already given me, even after 24 hours of what seemed like hell.


And here we are.  Mine and Jared's hearts are still tender and very vulnerable right now, but our prayer is that God will restore us and help us to use this part of our story now to bring glory to His name.  We want to be able to be used by Him to encourage and help others.  I know the most of encouragement I've received the past 24 hours have been from the women who have experienced this loss before, so if you are one of those who are reading this...please know how much of a blessing you are to people like me.  And please know that I have a special place in my heart and prayers for you and the little ones you will meet again one day.
So...this has been probably the worst year of my life.  But at the same time...this has been the best year of growth for Jared and I.  We've barely got just one year under our belts of marriage and we've experienced so much.  But what has kept us going throughout this year is the fact that we serve a God who is bigger, stronger, and knows us better than anyone.  We have a God who loves us and will not tempt us beyond what we can handle, we have a God who will help us get back up, wipe the dust off, and continue on our journey with him.  He will strengthen us in our testing and trials.  So this is why we believe the story of Job kinda fits with our year so far...maybe not quite to Job's exact situation, but in some ways.  We know that God will never forget us or leave us, if he had, then there is no way that Jared and I would be doing as well as we are right now.  We've prayed that God uses us and his servants to show others that He is worth it.  He is worth following after.  We want to be the ones whom He can look down upon today and say to that disgusting satan, "Have you considered my servants, Jared and Anna?  They will not be shaken by your temptations and schemes, they will not turn from Me and will have fear for Me.  They will turn from your evil and look to Me, because they know that I am their God, and I will always take care of them."  


THAT is the God we serve!