Ta daaaahhh!!!! Two days in a row of posting a blog post 🥳😂 Happy Friday!! We have had a lovely week this week! We actually began with a wee day off together on Monday as it was a bank holiday 🤩 It was a super chilled day and so good to just have time together (that’s one of our favourite things ❤️)

On Tuesday, Caleb was back at school, and Neil and I were meeting up with some friends who are leading a church about half an hour away from where we live! One of the things that we think God has made us for (Neil in particular) is encouraging and training people for the leadership God has put in them, and so any time we get invited to do that we feel very excited! So Neil and the male leader spent the morning together, dreaming about how they can take steps forward in their context! And while the boys were meeting, us girlies went out for a coffee and big chats 😃 I love how God leads us into such life-giving moments — He is wonderful! We ended up spending the whole morning with our friends and then staying for lunch 😃 It was a full and great wee day!

Tuesday was also our doggo’s birthday — that’s not actually much of an event in our house, but she does get a present 😂😂 And speaking of Biscuit, she had a vet appointment yesterday and while we were there I got chatting to a lovely family who were leaving their dog in for something more serious. They were feeling quite anxious about the procedure, and just before I left I got chatting to them again and was able to offer to pray with them. They were so open and wanted me to do that, so we just prayed together for God’s peace and protection for them all through the whole experience. It was a very natural and sweet moment in the car park of the vet’s surgery ❤️

Wednesday this week was our daughter Cara’s birthday ❤️ She would have been 16 this year!! Every year we take time together as a family to celebrate having had her in our lives ❤️ Her name means “God’s gracious gift”, and that is truly who Cara was — a gracious and precious gift from God for our family. Neil and I went out for a lovely breakfast together to celebrate her (Caleb had to go to school, so we missed him there ❤️) and then we all got a wee takeaway dinner and watched a movie as a family in the evening 😃 (Haha, all celebrations in our house revolve around food 😂)

Sixteen years ago, we were in the most painfully heartbroken place we’ve ever been. And the journey through that particular “valley of the shadow of death” was long, and more painful than our hearts knew how to handle at times. But as we journeyed through the loss of our beautiful baby girl, with God filling our every breath and step, we stood in awe at how God not only put us back together, but how He made us more well than we had ever been before. God doesn’t leave us in our pain — His word about not abandoning us in our lowest and most fragile state proved to be more true than we ever could have imagined! He truly is faithful!

What happened with Cara wasn’t how God planned it, and it will never be okay — but God has healed us so completely that we are more okay than we have ever been on the other side of it ❤️ It’s an “only God” thing that I can’t quite explain! So this week, as we celebrated our girl, we remembered the joy of who she was, and we grieved for the dream of who she would have been ❤️ We will always love and miss her, and we are beyond thankful for the time that we had with her — and above all else, we are so thankful to the only One who held us the whole way through, and the only One who holds us still ❤️🙌

Our wonderful Miracle Halls team served the community again this week while we were celebrating Cara! It truly is such a gift to adventure alongside these guys! They turn up every week and pray with expectancy for the Lord to move in miraculous ways in our community ❤️ And this week was no different, even though Neil and I were taking time off. The team sent a wee update the next morning sharing about how while nobody had come in in person this week, someone had text to ask for pray for healing as they recover from a surgery. Our team prayed, with faith, for healing 🙌 And later on they got a text from this person letting them know that the pain levels were low and they were feeling the effects of the prayers 🙌 Thank You Jesus!! It is always amazing to see God’s love and power on display in these amazing ways ❤️

The last couple of days of this week have been quite “writey” for us. Neil is studying through a new book at the minute and working away at writing youth stuff for church, and praying through some training things that we have coming up throughout this year, which we’re very much looking forward to 😃

I decided yesterday that I’d head over to a coffee shop to write the blog post, and it was so fun 😃 I definitely love a little bit of a buzz around me when I’m doing stuff like that!! And during my coffee I got chatting to someone who I used to be friends with when I was a teenager 😃 It was such a lovely wee surprise moment in my day! (Actually — I also bumped into another teenage friend earlier this week who I haven’t seen for years, so it’s been a bit of a week for that! I wonder if God is crossing my path with old friends for a reason?? Let’s see 😃👍)

I headed back to the coffee shop again today to do a bit of writing and reading, and again I loved it! But the Wi-Fi was a bit rubbish today, so I wasn’t able to properly get everything done like I’d hoped (so I’m back home finishing this post now 😂) I bumped into some people and had great chats too, which was lovely 😃

As I said, I’m home now, and we’ve just finished recording a wee podcast that Neil’s getting uploaded now! Then this afternoon we think we’re meant to pop into town and go to a Christian bookshop. We have no idea why, but the thought popped into my head this morning, so we’re going to go in just in case it is God’s idea ❤️🙌 Then we are heading into the weekend, excited as always about what God has in His heart to do 😃🥳