Our Hearts Are Home
November 23, 2019 — Gary and Laura House
Welcome to our blog and thank you for taking the time to let us share our thoughts with you. We hope in the posts to come that you’ll find encouragement, inspiration, and challenging content that is useful to you. However, for our inaugural post, we simply want to introduce ourselves and Our Hearts Are Home.
We’ve been married nearly 37 years, and have three amazing children — two who work in ministry here on earth and one who resides in Heaven. It’s this last one, Nathan, who left us unexpectedly in 2016, shattering our hearts and leaving us to grapple with a host of unanswerable questions that every bereaved parent faces. Why did this happen? Why didn’t God heal him?
Our family in 2013
And then there were all of the “what if’s” and “should haves”. There are so many questions that grieving people struggle through. If you are one of those, then you understand. But over the past few years, we’ve accepted the fact that many of those unanswerable questions truly are that — unanswerable.
Oftentimes grieving people struggle with questions about God. Does He truly love us? Can we trust Him? Like never before in our lives, we can answer a resounding “yes” to all of those questions. We understand more fully now that when we seek God in the midst of grief, hardship, or suffering, we enter into deeper intimacy with Him and experience the depth of His love for us.
Not too far into our journey of grief, we discovered the blessing of being with others who were also walking this road, and that is why Our Hearts Are Home was born. When grieving people come together, amazing things happen as fellow travelers share their stories, seek to encourage one another, and are challenged to trust Jesus, the only one who can truly comfort our broken hearts.
I Corinthians 1:3-4 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
We are different people today as God has done something in our lives that can only be accomplished through suffering. Emerging from this experience is a clearer picture of the purpose of earthly life and a deeper gratitude for God’s abounding grace and unconditional love.
Whether you are grieving the loss of someone dear, suffering in another way, or simply want to help those who are walking a difficult road right now, we hope you will enjoy listening to our podcast (Gary) and reading our blog (mostly Laura). And if you, like us, are waiting to be reunited with a child in Heaven, perhaps we will see you at an upcoming Gathering.
Many blessings to you.
Gary and Laura
