As the snow begins to recede and the rivers begin to rise here in the interior of Alaska, I am thankful the Lord has brought us through another long and very snowy winter. Last week I swatted my first mosquito and watched a pair of swans fly over. This morning I heard the first robins sing. A new season is here.

So it feels like a good time to change gears a bit on the You Can Trust Him blog.

Most of the material here was written very early in our new life without our Hans. It was a time of deep, deep sorrow and heavy grief. But, through God’s merciful kindness, I no longer feel I am drowning in that stormy sea of sorrow and I have found in recent months that I cannot write about it with the same depth and intensity because I am no longer hurting with the same depth and intensity. In short, I can’t write convincingly about what I do not feel. I wrote during the night, from a place of crushing sadness. I cannot go there anymore.

Am I still sad? You bet. I still miss our boy. But, thankfully, not with the same unrelenting force as in those early months and years. Perhaps that fact will give the newly bereaved some hope that there are brighter days ahead.

Writing about God’s Faithfulness for the Grieving Parent has been a tremendous help and blessing to my hurting heart these past six years and I thank God for His hope and comfort as I poured out my sorrow onto the keyboard. Writing forced me to work through the pain and gave me the opportunity to record God’s amazing love and faithfulness as He quieted my wounded soul. The purpose of this blog has always been to honor the Lord Jesus Christ no matter what. That will not change.

I also want to thank my family for their support as I spent long hours editing and formatting the manuscript for my book Never Ceasing: God’s Faithfulness in Grief.

And I want to thank my readers for reading my sometimes very long posts and for taking the time to comment and encourage me. It helped, a lot, and I will not forget.

So this doesn’t mean I will never again write about grief, child loss, or related themes. But, as the Lord leads, the focus will broaden to include other issues and life experiences. Maybe some fiction I’ve been working on.

It’s time.

I think Hans would agree.

“Faith isn’t the ability to believe long and far into the misty future. It’s simply taking God at His Word and taking the next step.” -Joni Erickson Tada