The beginning of spreadJOY

I think we all can relate – the news we get that we think will be the thing that breaks us and alters the plans we have made for our lives.  It can look like so many different things – the diagnosis, the death, the loss of a relationship, pain that has been forced on you that you didn’t deserve and it feels like nothing in our world will ever be the same.  We are hopeless and angry, sometimes especially with God, and we can’t understand why this happened. 

Lindsay knew this experience all too well.  She played many roles in her life, but most importantly, she was a mother to a 6-year-old child.  Everything Lindsay ever did was for her son.  I can remember her telling me so many times that her goal was for him to want to hang out with her when he was grown-up.  Her diagnosis and the loss of her life changed those plans and she never asked for or deserved that either. 

The truth is, we can allow our pain to swallow us whole or we can turn it into an ability to pull someone else out of the darkness.  God wants to use your experiences for good and in the words of Steven Furtick, “if you focus on the reason you’ll miss the revelation.”  In her last few months, Lindsay began writing down her experiences in a journal with a message on the cover that captured her essence, “Always Believe.”  Always Believe – in yourself, the goodness of others’, the grace of God, and that the best is truly yet to come.

“This morning it hit me hard how the looming possibility of death has affected my mental attitude lately.  It’s so weird to think of it as a blessing, but it 100% is.  Just thinking about and planning what I want to do before I leave the Earth has given me such an intentional (& almost exciting) focus.  I think those around me can see it and feel it too.  I have this sense of urgency to do everything I have put off or thought I could do later.  This is a new feeling over the last two weeks since I got the brain news.  And a lot to do with it.”

(Lindsay Stetson journal dated 12/30/2019)