What Hope Really Looks Like

(I am wrapping up the miscarriage series this week. But can I tell you, the next two posts, are dear to my heart and deal with topics interwoven into the Christian walk. If you've been avoiding the blog because miscarriage is not fun to read about, maybe don't avoid these ones.)


I was on the phone with my mom, pouring out the pain of the past year.

“Mom, I just don’t know how to trust God. I don’t know how to move forward. I want a baby. I really wanted that baby. And I am scared to try again because I just can’t lose again. I really don’t think I can.”

“Amanda,” My mom pauses. Her voice shakes a little, like she bracing herself for the weight of the words she’s about to speak.  “If at some point I had stopped trying, there would be no you. You are my promise fulfilled.”

{And then we both cried.}


My mom’s story, and my story really, begins like this. One month shy of 19, my mom married my dad. At 20, she had a miscarriage. At 21, she gave birth to her first son—Robby, after my dad. But the birthing room didn’t erupt into joy or a gender announcement, but rather a hushed panic—doctors and nurses clued into the knowledge that something was wrong rushing to identify it quickly. Robby was born with congenital heart disease. His aorta hadn’t formed properly and his heart was full of holes. As soon as he was able, he underwent open heart surgery and spent the first few months of his life in the hospital. He was sent home for a month and then returned due to complications from the surgery. At five months old, he was scheduled for a second open heart surgery. The night before the surgery, my brother so wearied from months of fighting couldn’t properly swallow the food he was given. He aspirated and died.

My mom has told me how after Robby’s death she felt like a mother but she had no baby to mother. She was young and newly-married to my dad who deals with grief much differently.  She felt alone and empty and sad.

A while after Robby’s death, my mom tried to get pregnant again. She had three miscarriages. If you ask her about it, she will tell you she felt her life was doomed to sorrow, one after another after another.

Then she got pregnant—her sixth pregnancy. She didn’t celebrate it, not even when the doctor declared her fine and the baby’s heartbeat strong.

It wasn’t until hearing the vigorous cry of a newborn taking her first breath, seeing skin a healthy shade of pink, and watching a room erupt into joy, crying out “girl!,” that she let herself believe she was having a baby for reals.

I was that baby… the happy miracle on a broken road full of sorrow. The fulfillment of a promise breathed quietly into the soul of a woman longing to be a momma.

It was five months later that my mom knelt beside her bed and gave God her whole life.

If she would have declared the suffering too great, the pain of losing again too daunting, the fight simply not worth it…

I wouldn’t be here.

Neither would Andy, Kelly or Jono.

Neither would Addy, Jed, or Zion, or, God-willing, her grandkids yet to come.

That’s kind of a sobering thought.
  

Hope is a rather weak word in the English language. I hope you do well. Here’s to hoping. Oh, I hope so. It’s almost wishy-washy and covers nice ideas as well as something our heart desperately yearns for.

But in the Hebrew language, hope is not a weak word. The Hebrew language likes to attach something tangible and concrete to even lofty ideas like hope.

I have been studying out hope in the Psalms. There are four different words that get used interchangeably for the words that appear in our translations as hope and wait. I want to look at two of those words.

The first is qavah. It means hope, but the picture that word intends to give is of a person tying a rope around something, binding it up, and holding on. It speaks of something active, something that requires strength. It is anything but a weak word used to express a fleeting feeling. It means believing to your very core, not giving up, holding on for dear life.

The other word is yachal. It means to remain, to stand in one place and to wait.

Two completely different words all wrapped up in the Biblical idea of hope. The Bible conveys this, and if you aren’t seeing it, let me just say it out loud: Sometimes hope is the absolute strongest and bravest thing you can do.

Hope is an anchor for your soul.

When you have found yourself unable to get pregnant for years, and still you try. When you have had every single door slam in your face for the job you know you were called to, and you apply one more time. When you’ve been cheated on, manipulated, abused, and God lays a godly man or a godly friend in front of you and you step into that relationship.

No one tells you about the sheer audacity it can take to hope.


I want to leave off with this verse (and it reads so powerfully when you read it in light of the original Hebrew).
“I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait ---> (wait=qavah-strength, bind myself to His promises)
And in His word to I hope ---> (hope=yachal-remain, stay in this one place)
My soul waits for the Lord  ---> (waits=yachal)
more than watchmen for the morning."
Can I just take a moment to make sure you didn’t miss that the place where it says yachal (to remain), is in His Word. Stand. Stand and remain and don’t back down from what the word of God says. (<---and let’s slap a period at the end of that sentence. Boom.)

Okay now check out what follows:

"O Israel, hope in the Lord ---> (hope=yachal)
For with the Lord there is lovingkindness,
And with Him is abundant redemption." ---> (redemption=peduwth-to divide, separate, liberate)
Psalm 130: 5-7

I know I just threw it at you, but did you catch what redemption means here?

Redemption/Peduwth is God saying, dear son and daughter, I know that what is on this side of the waiting and hoping is painful. But I am going to divide it from you, separate it from you, redeem it entirely. I will liberate you. And I will do this abundantly. You, dear heart, are loved. I am here. Hold on.

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland” Isaiah 43:19.

By Grace,

Amanda Conquers


And because I know I need these words stamped on my heart, and maybe you do too, here's a printable I made just for us. (Just click the link for a printable document version)



If you missed the introduction to this series, you can find it HERE.

If you would like to continue reading, here are the rest of the posts in the series:
Season of Mourning
When You Are Trying to Make Something Out of Your Ashes
Project Still Hope

What You Need to Know When Fear is Suffocating You
Practical Advice for the Grieving Woman and Those Who Love Her 

Project Still Hope

About three weeks ago, we did some serious yard work. The house we live in had been neglected for years and the front planter was full of weeds... and I do mean full.of.weeds.

Somewhere in the breaking up the soil, removing weeds and more weeds and more weeds, in the dirt under my fingernails and the blisters on my hands… I was physically working through the soul-disappointment of that fifth miscarriage.

I got an idea while playing in the dirt. A dream really.

I had been looking, maybe without even realizing it, for some way to bury my losses. Something that would validate that I indeed had lost life, something that would tangibly demonstrate the little impressions forever left on my heart. Something that would be a physical sign of the trust I needed to place in the Lord. Something that would point to the resurrection power of Christ, even in this.

Bulbs.

It sounds funny to blurt out that word, and maybe it means moving my seed analogy over just a tad, but the coincidence doesn’t escape me that (most) bulbs get buried six inches down. They die in the cold. And then spring comes. And something rather ugly, rather dead, becomes beautiful and alive.


It’s a simple idea really, but I thought, what if I could challenge others facing loss to walk this hard journey with me? What if we could all have some way to lay our shattered dreams to rest? What if we could make some kind of memorial, something that might make this hard thing beautiful? What if we could all rejoice together when winter has done her work, and the new life begins to spring up? What if we could make this world just a little bit more beautiful because we have lost, and loved, and chose to let it rest in our Saviors arms?

What if we all planted bulbs?

And so I am reaching out. If it’s just me and the bulbs in my garden, I am okay with that. But if you want to link arms with me and do this together… well, let’s do this.

After this post I will provide some links about bulb growing, but I want you to know, even if where you live has a foot of snow on the ground already, or where you live is hot desert, or if you think you have a brown thumb, or whatever… if you want to do this. You can. There is actually a way to “force” bulbs indoors using a fridge, a pot, and a sunny spot in your house. Most bulbs are hardy and not so sensitive to whatever gardening mistakes we might make.

Also, if you happen to live in sunny California or a similarly warmer climate, right now is the perfect time to plant bulbs and that “perfect time” will last through December (when bulbs go on clearance at Walmart, I’m just saying).

I would love it (and I think it would be so good for our hearts) if we could link arms together as we walk this hard road.

You can use the hashtag #projectstillhope (on twitter, facebook, or Instagram) to share and find other women. Post the journey, and definitely post the beautiful result. Share the scriptures that are getting you through the day. Share your discouragement and share your encouragement. Share your story. If sharing on social media is not your thing (and that is completely fine! I kinda stink at it too.) you can email me at amandaconquers AT gmail DOT com.

Dear sister, even if you don’t want to share this with me or with us, will you pretty please find at least one person you can include on your journey. One person who you can tell what you lost, and how you are dealing with it. Don’t do it alone. Please.

I am telling you it is good for the heart to acknowledge the life you carried even if it was just a short amount of time. And it is so healing to watch something beautiful come out of something so painful.

Maybe let's flood the internet, our neighborhoods, our backyards and our kitchen windows with the hope that though we've lost tiny seeds, it was life and it was precious. And God can make something beautiful out of it.


By Grace,
Amanda Conquers




Links: 
4-Part How to Plant Bulbs with pictures.
How Force a Bulb to Grow indoors

FYI's: 
Spring bulbs (like hyacinth, tulip and daffodil) should be planted around the time the lows are in the 40's. You can still try if your area is already colder than this, and there is a good chance your bulbs will still bloom come spring. But if you are worried, just plant indoors.  
If you live in a very warm climate, try something like the amaryllis or paperwhite narcissus. These cannot handle freezing temps but thrive in warm climates.
If you really want to physically plant a bulb outdoors and worry the opportunity has already passed in your area, there are bulbs you plant in the spring for summer blooms (like dahlias and gladiolus).


If you missed the introduction to this series, you can find it HERE.

If you would like to continue reading, here are the rest of the posts in the series:
Season of Mourning
When You Are Trying to Make Something Out of Your Ashes

What Hope Really Looks Like
What You Need to Know When Fear is Suffocating You
Practical Advice for the Grieving Woman and Those Who Love Her 

When You Are Trying to Make Something Out of Your Ashes

I pushed my spade six inches down. I tilted and lifted. The soil broke and erupted and left behind a small crater with loose bits of dirt that had fallen back in.

I took one of my tulip bulbs and set it in the hole. I took care to place it so that roots were down and the stalk up. And then I pushed the dirt I had temporarily displaced back into the hole.

I did this some forty times. Digging. Sowing. Covering. Repeat.

Always six inches under.

And there in my brick planter leading up to our front door are the potential of daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths buried in the dirt, in the dark. When frost sends its death-kiss through the soil, the bulbs will slip into a deep slumber. If we didn’t already know the bulbs’ spring secret, we might say they were dead.

There they will wait through the bleak cold of winter, the dark days and nights, the rain, the snow, the icy winds and the thick fog.

And then spring comes.

Spring always comes. She carries her soft glow over wintered earth. She puts her warm breath to the ground, and it begins to thaw. The dormant bulbs awaken, at first a little lazily, yawning, stretching. Then they push out roots and send up stalks. Stalk, then bud, and, at long last, flower.

The final result is nothing short of glorious.   



Maybe you know that Jesus came to give beauty for ashes, but when you are sitting in the ash heap, it’s hard to see it.

I’ve taken my ashes, these last four miscarriages, and I’ve placed them in My Father’s hands. I’ve uttered words like “Not my will, but Thy will be done.” But the thing is, I’ve kept my hands there. I keep rearranging the pieces. I keep trying to work out some kind of purpose for it all. I want it to make sense.

I’ve thought maybe adoption, maybe 2 kids is all we’re meant to have, maybe it’s a nudge to pick up some of the dreams I’d laid aside.

And the thing is, I cannot make beauty out these last 4 miscarriages.

And the thing is, I know there is a dream in my heart for babies I haven’t yet met.

I’ve grappled those deep theological questions: did God cause this?  or does He allow it? Maybe I have some ideas based on Scripture, but it’s like I am attempting to hug a sumo wrestler: this hard theology, I just can’t get my arms around it.

Here’s what I do know: God can use it. God will use this for His Glory. I’ve seen it time and time again when I’ve faced the winter, the bleak, the impossible. And I’ve beheld the miraculous.

“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” Romans 8:28.


I believe there is a season for mourning, a cycle of grief, a time to stop and lament what never got to be.

But after that, comes something even harder… entrusting it to God. Placing that loss in His hands, removing your own hands, watching His hands close over it where you can’t see it, and waiting.

And maybe it feels a bit like winter, like barren. You wonder if you can trust Him, if He really loves you. And deep down you struggle with the part where you know you aren’t really worthy.

But spring always comes.

Death precedes resurrection.


I was reading of Jesus’ final hours before His death. He suffered, He bled, He felt the whip and the nails and the thorns. And then from the cross, Jesus cries out, “My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me?” And have I not felt that? Abandoned, cast off, like my worst fears could all come true. Really, I just struggle with believing that God actually loves me.

His final words before He died were surrender. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” And this is the thing I’ve struggled hard against. That final surrender. It means no longer holding on. And it feels a bit like dying. And you can’t hold on forever because death has a stench, and it will foul your life.

And then they lay Jesus’s body in a tomb. They rolled a stone over the opening—one big enough, heavy enough so as to ensure no one could ever sneak in and fake raising Him from the dead.  Jesus’s body sat in the still dark, in the damp earth… dead.

But we know that isn’t the end of the story. Jesus resurrected. And there was no amount of guards or heavy stones or darkness or death-stink that could hold Him down.

You can’t work out your miracle. You can’t tell God what His glory looks like.

All you can do is hand over your loss, your broken dreams… and release it.

Dear sister, I don’t know what God will make of your broken dreams, the life you lost, the life you’ve been unable to carry. But I do know, perhaps in a way wholly unexpected, perhaps in a way that has always been quietly whispering in your soul… New life will spring up from the ground.

Spring always comes.



How have you seen God do a resurrection-glory kind of miracle in your life?


By Grace,


Amanda Conquers


If you missed the introduction to this series, you can find it HERE.

If you would like to continue reading, here are the rest of the posts in the series:
Season of Mourning

Project Still Hope
What Hope Really Looks Like
What You Need to Know When Fear is Suffocating You
Practical Advice for the Grieving Woman and Those Who Love Her 

Season of Mourning


“Amanda! Come here real quick! There’s someone I want you to meet!”

I heard the familiar voice of a long-time friend. I tried to use the impending start of kid’s church as a reason to not be able to meet someone new. But she insisted again. You just have to meet them. They are your age.

It was a Sunday. I ran children’s ministries. I probably should have just stayed home. But staying home meant admitting that this was really happening.

For two weeks, I had been so full of wonder and excitement. We had laughed at the timing of Grandparent’s Day and bought cards for our parents. It would have been the first grandchild on both sides. But on that Sunday, I knew the worst was happening. That pregnancy was ending.

I sighed deep, put on my bravest face—my most genuine fake smile—and walked to the church foyer.

As I held out my hand, I saw her swollen belly. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I forced the words, “Hi. I’m Amanda,” past the lump forming in my throat. And when I realized that the most natural thing to small talk over would involve a due date, or gender, or months along… I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even get out the obligatory “nice to meet you” or “please, excuse me.” I bolted because I knew I was breaking.

When I got home from church, I laid on the couch. I stayed there for a week. Every time I used the bathroom and was confronted with the reality that the pregnancy was over, I wept. When the bleeding stopped, I decided my grief should stop as well. Surely one week of doing nothing but crying should suffice.

Afterwards, I put all my energy on getting pregnant again. I thought I would find comfort in a new pregnancy.

When I got pregnant again and the changing hormones crashed into the grieving I had not yet completed… I can tell you, another pregnancy is not where you find comfort. Friends, I was so sick. And yes, it was definitely morning sickness, but there wasn’t much excitement to pull me through the sickness. I lost fifteen pounds and threw up till my esophagus was bleeding raw. I closed myself up at home and watched Judge Judy and ate crackers and cried over dish piles for the smell of dish soap. It was more than nausea-sick though. I was depressed-sick, and I couldn’t understand why.

Someone told me that they got through morning sickness by remembering that each time they got sick it was just a reminder of a healthy baby growing. This is how I coped with morning sickness with Jed. I looked at my Addy-miracle and rejoiced for the joy I knew would come. This was not how I got through the sickness with Addy. Because I still ached for the baby I lost, and I hadn’t understood that you can’t replace the life involved in the failed pregnancy for the life involved in a healthy pregnancy.  

Miscarriage is more than a failed pregnancy. It’s the loss of life—a life.

That particular genetic combination of you and your husband that at conception fused together will never see the world... your olive skin tone, your husband’s dimpled chin and wide smile, your husband’s easy going nature combined with your fiery passion for life.  Whether you cringed at the bad timing or just rejoiced at the thought of a baby, that due date will not see the birth of a child. The ways you imagined making your announcement, the names you dreamed up, the decision you rolled around of when to find out the gender, the thought of where in your house this baby would fit…. All of that potential never got to be. It’s life. And its loss is worth mourning.

Here’s the words of Jesus: “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.”

When you fail to mourn, you fail to receive the comfort found in the arms of our Father.

Maybe it’s just me, but each time I have lost, I have searched for comfort everywhere else. I’ve thought that if I could just get pregnant again, I would be comforted. I’ve thought that if I could just understand why, I would be comforted. I’ve thought that if I could just have some kind of proof of my loss, some kind of validation, be far enough along so that I could bury something, I would be comforted.

It wasn’t until I crumbled on the floor, cried crocodile tears, wailed from the deepest part of me… it wasn’t until I got angry, and slammed my fists on the table, punched my pillow, and spewed boiling hot words at God My Father of how much I wanted that life and how stupid this was and why?!?!!!… it wasn’t until I let myself leak tears and linger reflective on what might have been… when I let my guard down and pressed into Jesus and asked Him to meet me here…

When I chose to walk out on deep water, across faith gaps, places unexplainable… When I chose to eat the mystery rather than understand it, when I spoke the bravest words I know: “It is well with my soul.”  

Somewhere in the passing of time, in the permission to be sad, in allowing mourning to be a season determined by the God who knows the seasons and causes them to change without an ounce of help from anyone, somewhere in opening my hands and handing over these broken pieces that I can’t make sense of... I found comfort.


Sister, coming from someone who had a miscarriage in which I found out I was pregnant in the morning and started cramping that afternoon… yes, even that needed to be mourned. It didn’t look anything like grieving after knowing for almost six weeks. But that doesn’t matter. You don't need to compare your grief to another, you just need to give yourself permission to walk through it. 

Friends, this was a hard post to write, and I have a feeling if you have ever walked this road, it was hard to read too. I want you to know, I am praying for you. I have been praying for you. You are heavy on my heart because you are heavy on His. I think the best way to end is in His Word.

“Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted” Matthew 5:4. 
“God is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in Spirit” Psalm 34:18. 
“From the end of the earth will I cry unto you, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I” Psalm 61:2.
"He that goes forth weeping, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him" Psalm 126:6.



How have you been at walking through the grieving process?


By Grace,
Amanda Conquers



If you missed the introduction to this series, you can find it HERE.

If you would like to continue reading, here are the rest of the posts in the series:
When You Are Trying to Make Something Out of Your Ashes
Project Still Hope
What Hope Really Looks Like
What You Need to Know When Fear is Suffocating You
Practical Advice for the Grieving Woman and Those Who Love Her

Still Hope: An Introduction to a Series on Miscarriage

I had another miscarriage.

Yes. Another.

I took the test a few Fridays back. Spotted that Sunday. Got myself into the doctor on Monday. And miscarried on Tuesday. Four days. That’s it. I was barely pregnant.

This is my fifth miscarriage. It overwhelms me to be putting that ordinal number (fifth!) in front of a word that speaks of defining loss. I can’t coherently string together words that would explain what it feels like to lose five times, but here’s some words come to mind: numb, angry, pained, discouraged, disappointed, and maybe even the word apathetic.

I admitted to a friend that I feel like a freak. Sometimes I even wonder if I just imagined those extra lines on the pee stick. I wonder if it’s possible to give false positives, and every time I’ve lost so early I want to kick myself for not waiting a full week past my missed period to take the test. I’m embarrassed to be sharing that I miscarried again… because it feels like I failed, and I keep failing.

I have a feeling anytime our bodies betray us, we feel a bit like a freak. When a uterus gives way or a cervix dilates too early or a fertilized egg implants in the wrong place, when our bodies fail to properly house the little life we so desperately want to bring into our home. When DNA hardwiring malfunctions, and life stops in its tracks before heart ever pumped. When an ultrasound reveals the life you’ve been carrying no longer lives. Oh friends. This is hard.

The most difficult part of this process for me, has been this need in me to define my loss—something besides zygote or failed pregnancy, something that validates that I indeed have lost something. Even when I miscarried at 10 weeks, the little life I carried grew no larger than the period at the end of this sentence. Doctors refused to say the word baby, and they corrected me if I did.

The Lord answered my broken cries for some kind of name to give my losses by giving me a picture. Do you know what there was in my womb?

A seed.

The tiniest of things with all the potential and hope and dreams the size of an oak tree. It might not have sprouted for reasons I cannot fathom, but I lost something. I’ve lost five seeds.

I can mourn the little lives with unformed hearts who never felt life-blood course through their veins. I can mourn because really it only takes a mother but a couple minutes to fall in love and see a future (even if she's still reeling from the shock of it.)

Though not all seeds get to send up a stalk into the warm sunshine, even the tiniest seed leaves an impression on the soil.

Can I tell you that this is not my favorite topic? I’d rather not write about miscarriage, about grief, about these things so hard and unexplainable. I feel vulnerable opening up about my grieving process, because it is so personal. I have this hope that one day I will look back and be grateful for this road I’m walking… but today, I would much rather be walking a different road. And that’s honest.

Sometimes I’ve felt like moving forward through the grieving process has been a bit like hacking through the jungle. It’s like blazing a trail, walking paths unwalked. I know that’s not true, but grief can be isolating. And miscarriage doesn’t get talked about much, especially a miscarriage belonging to an unannounced pregnancy.

I’m writing what I wish I could have read.  I’m writing because I have longed to know that I wasn’t alone. 

I’m writing what God has been speaking to me along the way.

My hope is that if you are walking this hard road (oh dear heart. I am so sorry) maybe we can hack through the jungle together, maybe we can blaze a wider trail, maybe we can offer the wisdom of experience and the encouragement of camaraderie that makes a trail easier to walk.

We will be talking about losing, about grieving, and about hoping again. I even have a project God laid on my heart that I want to share with you. I think it will give you a tangible way to both grieve and hope--no matter the stage in pregnancy in which you miscarried.

Even if miscarriage isn’t your story of loss or suffering, you are so very welcome here. So is your story. This hard substance of miscarriage touches on topics that are deeply woven into the fabric of Christian life. I believe there is something here for you this week.

Friends, I hinge my life and this blog on Romans 8:35,37:

that in all these things… yes, even

this

thing… they cannot separate us from God’s love, and we shall press forward and overwhelmingly conquer this darkness.

God’s love is here. It is. I know it. And by His strength, I shall keep pressing forward. I shall overcome. You too, friend. And that’s what this series is really about.

I know this is hard, this subject, this kind of sharing, but it's an important subject, and your story is important. Here is your invitation. Will you join me? 

Here's the part where I ask you to be brave and share your story. 

If a comment on a public domain terrifies you= amandaconquers AT gmail DOT com

By Grace,

Amanda Conquers

To Continue Reading the Rest of the Series:

Season of Mourning

When You Are Trying to Make Something Out of Your Ashes

Project Still Hope

What Hope Really Looks Like

What You Need to Know When Fear is Suffocating You

Practical Advice for the Grieving Woman and Those Who Love Her

About Me and This Blog

Hi!


I’m Amanda.

I am an imperfect girl, a huge fan of Grace, and a follower of Jesus. I believe in absolute Truth.

I am the wife to one smoking hot cop. We’ve been married 9 years.

I am a momma to 2 littles: Addy (6) and Jed (3). They are my heart.



Coffee and deep conversations are my love language. I am a California girl (like totally) to my very core. I love road trips, bird watching, literature, and playing in the dirt (aka gardening).

 I battle depression and anxiety. I have walked the hard road of repeated miscarriages. I struggle to embrace that God could really love me. I make a lot of mistakes; really, I'm just a bit of a mess. But I hinge my life on these verses: 
“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? But IN ALL these things we OVERWHELMINGLY CONQUER through Him who loved us.” (Romans 8:35, 37)

This blog pretty much hinges on those verses too. God made me to conquer, you to conquer. 

{Pssst... did you notice that Romans says overwhelmingly conquer?} 

Yes, in all those ordinary everyday ways you might fail: frazzled momma yells, dirty dish piles, forgotten birthday cakes, toddler messes that should cue the creepy Psycho theme music... 
And yes, God made us to conquer even in those hard things. I believe that there is no place His Grace can't reach.

I talk a lot about being a Jacob girl. Jacob who wrestled God. Jacob who was given a limp. Jacob who with a limp became, Israel, God prevails. Because the only way for God to prevail in our lives, the only real way to overcome, isn't to try harder; it's to walk leaning on Him. 

I am not a girl who has it all together. I am a girl who walks with a limp. I am a girl who leans on her Savior-become-Friend. I am a girl who, by the Grace of God, shall be called an overcomer.

I am inviting you to join me here on this Grace journey.

First Time Here?

If I could pick the posts visitors were to read, these are what I would pick. (They are my favorite and the most telling about me):  

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Thank you so much for being here, new friend! I am honored to have you over at my place ;)

xo
Amanda Conquers

Favorite Things GIVEAWAY

I was asked to participate in a giveaway of favorite everyday items.

I really wanted to be apart. The women and the blogs participating are awesome. (Like seriously, click on a few of the links I have listed at the end of this post, you will not regret it. Warm, kindred spirits. Straight up.) And I just love the chance to give good stuff away.

Only problem. I could not figure out what my favorite thing could possibly be (other than coffee. It's always coffee.)

I searched my kitchen drawers looking for some handy tool I couldn't live without, I looked through my bookselves, my desk, my vanity... for something that would bless one of you.

I couldn't find anything. But as I looked, I kept seeing words. Words printed out and taped to my desk, post it note reminders, encouragement printed on cards, lip-liner scriptures on my mirror, hand painted Jesus words on wooden boards, words trapped in chalk-painted frames... Encouragement. Reminders. All words, pointing to my Savior and the kind of woman/mom/wife He's shaping me into.

Yes. Encouraging words really are my favorite thing.

So that's what I am giving away. A printable and a hand-painted frame... a visual reminder of who you are in Him. Because sometimes, we need reminding. And we need it where we can see it.

{and even if you don't win the giveaway, I'll be giving away the printable to you all next week}

Also... I am giving away a Starbucks card, because coffee really is my love language.

To enter, just follow the instructions on the rafflecopter at the end of this post. (Psst... it's easy)

Giveaway ends this Friday (Oct. 31).

The winner will get each and every favorite item contributed to this giveaway.


What's in the Giveaway (Plus Links to Some Quality Blogs):



  • Kayse is giving away a collection of Martha Stewart Office items!
  • Britta is giving away a ConAir Power Facial Cleanser!
  • Jennifer is giving away a "Be Still" print!
  • Monica is giving away a Let It Go (by Karen Ehman) Study Pack!
  • Erika is giving away a super cute coffee cozy of your choice!
  • Carey is giving away Cravings, a daily devotional for moms!
  • Kristin is giving away 2 books by Angie Smith - For Such A Time As This & Audrey Bunny!
  • Anna is giving away a candle, tea, and chocolate!
  • Bethany is giving away a Ginger & Lime Sugar Scrub & a 5ml bottle of Wild Orange Essential Oil!
  • Jamie is giving away a Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook!
  • Amanda is giving away a framed print and a $10 gift card to Starbucks!
  • Leeann is giving away a set of linen notecards!



    • a Rafflecopter giveaway

    Okay, so now I really want to know... What is your favorite everyday item? 



    By Grace,
    Amanda Conquers