Tag: my story

Finding Rory

stephaniemoorewrites
This picture didn’t quite to the purple coloring justice. At all.

One way that I keep Rory with me is to find her in the everyday.

I look for things that remind me of her.

One of the biggest ways I see her is through the color purple.

As we were waiting for our Sydney flight at LAX, there were these big pillars in the city that lit different colors. When we stepped out into the terrace they were all a gorgeous bright purple. They stayed that way for a few minutes until they turned to half blue, then all blue. (I saw you too, Tommy.) I never saw them turn that bright purple again.

The next morning as the sun was coming up on our 15 hour flight, light began to show through our shaded windows. The whole plane was glowing purple.

What a beautiful color Rory shared with me. I love looking about our world and finding her through this color.

Purple is majestic and powerful.

For me, it’s love.

When There’s So Much Loss

stephaniemoorewrites
The grandsons carrying Dorothy.

Loss.

So much loss.

After we received the call about the death of my mother-in-law, Dorothy, I curled up in bed, crying.

I thought, “How will we move forward? How do we keep going? It’s too hard. Life’s too painful.”

As my thought was concluding I got an immediate impression.

“You’re not alone. You’ve done this. You weren’t alone then and I won’t leave you now.”

These last two years have felt heavy, hard, and impossible.

But as a family we’ve done the impossible with help from family, friends, and Him.

Faith. That’s been the key for me.

We’ll keep putting one foot in front of the other because we believe we’re going to see these loved ones again.

I’ll take a deep breath and hugs my boys through their sorrow because I believe we’re building a family that’ll last into forever.

I’ll cling to my husband as we weather yet another storm because I love him and I have faith that there’s something more for us than this life.

Faith isn’t easy. In fact it can be downright hard.

But we’ve experienced loss before so we know the work it’s going to require.

And we know we’re not alone.

So we’ll keep trusting. Keep believing.

We’ll keep hoping.

Purple Fruit Snacks

stephaniemoorewrites

As we were rounding out Rory’s Bags of Love with food items, we decided we wanted to include a couple of Rory’s favorites.

Goldfish and fruit snacks were pretty much on her daily diet.

The week before she passed away, she came home excited that someone at her school traded fruit snacks with her.

She got one that was purple!

Her next question was, “Will you get me some?”

She even saved the wrapper to show me!

That night after I dropped her off at karate, I went to Target and got her a big package of purple fruit snacks.

She ate a few of them but the package sat in the pantry uneaten for a long time. Each time I looked in the pantry I was reminded of her excitement and love until the boys slowly ate them.

Now we get to share that love and excitement with a lot of kids.

Finding Hope

stephaniemoorewrites

My hope. My heart. My lovie dovie.

November, December, and January are hard months to get through since Rory’s passing.

But last December was extra painful with the unexpected death of my brother-in-law, Saul.

I haven’t posted on my blog.

I have drafts but nothing published.

Here’s my problem: I want everything I write to end with hope.

Life is hard, but there’s still hope.

Emotions are high, but they won’t always be.

January feels never ending, but it will, in fact, end within ten days.

But I haven’t felt very hopeful.

I’ve felt empty.

Incapable.

And tired.

On the flip side:

I haven’t felt alone.

I’ve had enough energy to accomplish everything I needed to and wanted to accomplish. Even when sleep evaded me.

And I’ve been inspired. I sent off a rewrite to my agent this month. I felt inspired daily on how to help my boys and on what I need to do.

These feelings contradict the ones I listed first. They seem incapable of coexisting.

But they have.

And that’s Grace.

That’s the hope I’ve been struggling to find.

As I do everything I can, Christ lifts, inspires, and carries me through the rest.

As I find my way through the myriad of emotions that resurfaced last month, He’s guiding me and giving me room to recover.

As I feel broken, He’s making me whole.

And I’m not done yet. Two more weeks until her birthday.

I can do this.

Because of Him.

Life is Pain

stephaniemoorewrites

A quote from The Princess Bride has been batting around my head the last few days.

“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

I feel this way lately.

Life is painful.

Too hard!

Then guilt sets in. I need to be more grateful. I need to focus on hope. I need to be optimistic.

I invalidate my right to be sad or mad at what’s going on in life.

I went back to the movie and thought about when this quote is said.

Wesley says this when he was the Dread Pirate Roberts.

After staving off death on a pirate ship, he came back to the mainland to find his betrothed, Buttercup, engaged to another.

And that guy’s paying to have her murdered!

And then he’s inches from Buttercup and she doesn’t recognize him.

He had a right to feel that way about life. It was crappy!

But here’s the thing about Wesley, he never does nothing.

His ship gets captured by pirates. He pleads for his life exclaiming true love. Then proceeds to learn swordsmanship, to gain knowledge, and inoculate himself to poison.

When he discovers the plot on Buttercup’s life, he doesn’t leave her to her doom. He rescues her in his pain.

He keeps putting one foot in front of the other until the end.

There, he gets to ride off with Buttercup on beautiful white horses.

He wouldn’t say life is pain in that moment I don’t think. His life carried more hope and promise then.

I think that’s true in all of our lives.

There are times when I think it’s okay for us to think, “Life is pain”. Because it can be!

What I think is important is that we keep walking. We keep learning. We keep loving.

Moments of hope will come as we step.

Optimism will seep into us as we strive.

Life might be pain right now.

But that doesn’t mean it always will be.