Good morning, everyone. It's great to see you here this morning. I hope you've had some good discussion, about DIY projects. Hopefully, more successes than failures. Anyone that I've tried has pretty much been a failure, but hopefully you've had more luck than me.

So I'm gonna go ahead and introduce our speaker for this morning. Hannah Blocker has attended Faith Church for about four years. She and her husband Ben have three children, Samuel, Milo, and Josephine. Hannah is a stay at home mom but previously worked as a nurse practitioner, and more recently, she has launched an interior design business and, has done so many DIY projects and done them well. Lots of success, So skills I wish I had, but I do not.

So let me pray for Hannah and then she will come up and share. Heavenly father, I just wanna thank you for this morning to be together, to worship you, to fellowship and to hear from Hannah. Lord, I pray you'd be with her as she speaks. I pray that, you would be with those of us in in the class this morning and that, we would hear what you want to say to us through her story, Lord. And I just I thank you for her willingness to share with us and just for the ways you've been at work, in her life.

I pray these things in your name. Amen. Good morning. Thank you all for coming, to hear my story. I'm guessing that a lot of you have a foundational tragedy in your life If you live long enough, I think it happens.

I'm talking about that incident that changed your life forever, a circumstance that broke you to your core, something that you never would have seen coming and maybe you still wish had never happened even if you can see God's hand in it in hindsight. Today, I'm going to share about my foundational tragedy. When I was 12, my life was changed forever, but it's not a singular event. It was a decision that led to an accident, that led to numerous other losses and sacrifices that are still taking place to this day. I grew up in South Central Pennsylvania in a close family.

As the youngest of three and the only girl, I lived a charmed life. Well, as long as you count it charmed to live your life on the sidelines of your brother's games. My brothers are five and eight years older than I, so by the time I came around, it was their world, and I was just living in it. But I didn't mind. My oldest brother, Dave, was very athletic and intelligent, and I quickly realized he was cool.

My other brother, Matt, loved to pick on me and scare me, which admittedly was easy to do, and Dave would come to my defense usually by sitting on Matt and farting. My apologies for the visual, but if you have brothers or sons, you understand. Dave was my hero. He taught me to shoot baskets and dribble a soccer ball. I developed a love of the red hot chili peppers and U2 and Life House because of our daily drives to school.

His friends not only tolerated me being around, but seemed to enjoy me. I watched him navigate the pressures of high school and plan out the next ten years of his life. I think he had his grad school picked out before he even started college. Basically, if Dave liked something or thought it was important, so did I. So, you can see why I struggled when, at age 12, that role model was taken away, but not in the traditional sense.

Dave had wrapped up his freshman year of college and in July 2002, he went to the beach with his two best friends from high school. They had stayed up late into the night and decided to just drive home instead of going to bed. Exactly twenty three years ago, on this very day, Dave fell asleep at the wheel and rolled his car off the road. His friends thankfully sustained minor injuries from the accident, but Dave's head took the brunt of the impact. In that one moment, our lives were forever altered.

Dave's calculus loving, future planning, sarcastic, joke cracking brain would never be the same. The rest of our family was together in the car, driving back from Indiana, where Matt had been attending the summer honors program at Taylor University. This being twenty three years ago, cell phones were not what they are now, and the one cell phone we had in the car had been turned off. When we were about three hours from home, my mom decided to call and check-in with my aunt, and she learned the news that hours earlier, Dave had been flown to shock trauma in Baltimore after sustaining a head injury. No one knew if he was alive.

No one had been allowed to receive any information or updates. All we knew was where he was. They got in touch with some family friends who met us on the highway and took me home while Matt and my parents went to the hospital to face whatever was waiting for them. Dave was alive, in a coma, with extreme brain swelling. He soon underwent a craniectomy to remove part of his skull to allow his brain more room to swell, and after two weeks, he opened one eye.

This was good news, he was emerging from the coma, but if there's one thing that I learned quickly about the brain, it's that we humans still know very little about the brain. Shock trauma was one and a half to two hours away from our home depending on Baltimore traffic. During Dave's time there, my mom was rarely far from him. She stayed in hotels, acquaintances houses, the Ronald McDonald House, and drove back and forth as often as she could. My dad was working hard to balance his demanding career as a family physician, support my mom and Dave, and see Matt and me at home.

I went to visit Dave occasionally to face this unknown person lying in a hospital bed, attached to more tubes than I thought he had use for. The beeps and clicks and unknowns were suffocating. And deep down, I knew that my big, strong hero of a brother would never be the same, even if no one was sharing that information with me. To be honest, though, I don't know exactly what was shared with me, or even most of what happened that year. Much of the year following the accident is a dark blur in my memory.

They say that's what happens when you experience trauma. Again, this mysterious brain that we humans are still learning about has some amazing protective qualities. I do know I spent a lot of time with my grandma and at friends' houses. I know we would receive phone calls every now and then saying there was a pivotal moment in Dave's recovery and we needed to pray. I know my parents were torn between their son fighting for his life and their other two kids, one of which was beginning his senior year of high school and the other was entering the teen years.

Not the time you would choose to undergo trauma, but then again, when is ideal? Matt took over as the new oldest child the best he could, but even he will admit it was a role he had never envied. Dave stabilized and moved to a rehab facility just outside Baltimore, but his progress slowed to a halt, and it was evident that long term plans needed to be made. My parents decided to move him to a long term care facility thirty minutes from our house while they constructed an addition onto our house just for Dave. I remember a few things from that time.

One, Matt wore Dave's soccer jersey in his honor as he played in the high school championship game. Two, it snowed on Christmas Eve as we headed down the highway to visit Dave and take him his gifts. Three, we endured many awkward conversations with people, not knowing how to support us, but graciously trying. We all knew this was not a typical loss. Dave hadn't died.

There was no closure in a memorial service, no easy way to explain to people what life was like, and no way of knowing what the future would hold. At age 13, I was learning the complexities of grieving for someone who was sitting right in front of you, of being angry at him for making a foolish choice while knowing my heart could never be mad at him for long. I was facing the inevitable trials of adolescence while caring for my brain injured brother, feeling like I had matured decades in one year while still not knowing how to navigate middle school. I wanted to talk about my brother with my friends, but they didn't know how to hold such a heaviness. So I harbored resentment and pulled away from them.

I dealt with anger and bitterness and jealousy. Oh, so much jealousy, especially anytime I met a girl with an older brother or if I saw a family looking perfect together or if other families were free to leave their house whenever they wanted. Victim mentality hit me hard. I began working through that super simple topic of why God allows suffering. I look back on that season and see a very lost person in myself.

Yet, I held onto a thin thread attached to a massive anchor in the Lord. I was angry with God. I journaled and wrote letters and songs and poems and cried so many tears to God. I knew who he was and I knew what I was feeling and going through. And the angst, the incongruence, the mystery of how both things could be true was something I wrestled with for years.

Just like the mystery of the brain, the mystery of mystery of suffering encapsulated me. I never walked away from God. I never discredited who he was or that what he said in the Bible was true, but I did tell him that I didn't get it. I questioned, did God really want good things for me? Did he really work all things for good?

Was he really for me? For many years, I thought suffering as a believer was like a badge to be worn. I thought it was my place to suffer, not as a joyful follower of God, but as a victim. And man, that victim mentality has no place in a redeemed soul. Romans eight thirty one through 37 was a scripture that I wanted to believe but couldn't fully until recently.

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also along with him graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns?

No one. Christ Jesus who died, more than that, who was raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, for your sake, we face death all day long.

We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No. In all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. It's safe to say I idolized my brother, and it took me years to admit that and finally see God in his rightful position of king. From that place, I am finally able to live as a conqueror, not a victim.

From here, I can see how God graciously does give me all things. Because with or without my human hero, God is still raining down love and blessings on me simply because of who he is and the fact that he has redeemed me and called me by name and made me co heir with Christ. This does not negate my pain or grief, but God holds it all with every tear as Psalm fifty six eight says. He also grieves with the brokenness of this world and the deviation from his original plan. My years of wrestling through the incompatibility of my suffering and God being good actually reflects that.

Ephesians two six through 10 says, and God raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. These were verses that for years my head knew were true, but my heart could not believe. Good works? Kindness? Grace?

Then why did you take my brother and all the other losses that came from that? I have journals to prove that God and I went back and forth on this topic. But if faith is small as a mustard seed can move mountains, then a sacrifice of praise can make a believing heart. Even while I doubted, I still believed him, and he has grown my mustard seed into a much larger tree of faith. Dave's accident led me on a journey that built a solid foundation on which to walk through every hardship I face, but my journey is far from over.

These foundational tragedies never go away. When a loved one is injured or taken from us, we grieve forever in small and large ways. I am still caught off guard to this day when I turn on nineties music and a song I used to hear in the car with Dave brings me to tears. I see the sparkle in my little girl's eyes as she admires her older brothers, and my heart aches as I think, I used to look at Dave like that. We grieve his presence in our family as we sit around the table and discuss what his family might look like or how his dry humor would lighten a situation.

We grieved heavily when one of the friends in the car with Dave took his own life just years after the accident, an immense evidence of the brokenness of this world. There are also still very tangible moments of grief. My parents still take care of Dave twenty four seven in their home. He is full care and bedbound, requiring pretty much the exact same level of care he needed twenty two years ago when they moved him home. They have caregivers who come in and help, but to make even a three day trip out here to see us is a big deal and sometimes gets altered because Dave or a caregiver gets sick.

My parents have learned to hold their plans very loosely, and I know they grieve the loss of the retirement years they thought they would have. Dave was at my wedding in PA, but was not able to be at Matt's wedding in Indiana. He has missed graduations, celebrations, births, vacations, all while still being very much alive. The tension of suffering and joy has become an ever present part of our lives. As we look to the future at my parents' age, none of us know how this will all play out.

My parents will not be able to care for Dave forever, although my mom doesn't seem to believe that. With sorrow, we discuss what could happen, and we unite together to make potential plans, knowing that God ultimately has ordered our steps forward, but there are practical things to be done in the meantime. This grief will last my lifetime, probably still sneaking up on me when I'm old and gray. I still live in the tension of my grief. Parts of me are still 12 and are finally being acknowledged and heard for the first time.

Throughout my life, loss has been an almost constant, although it has come in different forms. In college, I went through the falling out of dear friendships and diverting of my career goals during senior year. Simultaneously, my faith in God grew to be the deepest it had been while I dove into his word daily for direction and encouragement, again, trusting that what he said was true even when I didn't feel it. Every loss is a bit different, but I knew how to walk through them because of Dave's accident, raw and vulnerable before the Lord. In my junior year of college at Taylor, I met Ben, a Hoosier with a big heart and energetic zest for life that was contagious.

We dated through the rest of college and got engaged in fall twenty twelve. My life had taken another unexpected detour and instead of going to med school, I prepared to enter nursing school in a post baccalaureate program at Indiana Wesleyan University. Ben was finishing up a master's program in environmental science at Taylor, so we lived in what we adoringly called our shack in Upland for our first year of marriage. Since we got married with the understanding that we were not going to live in Indiana, feel free to laugh, we then moved to Pennsylvania and rented a place down the street from my parents. I worked for a year as a nurse at the hospital where I was born and then secured a job in Baltimore, Maryland as an environmental scientist.

We eventually moved to Maryland, just over an hour from my parents, and lived there for five years. That season of life brought many growing pains. Making friends and planting ourselves somewhere new was hard. Additionally, marriage was hard, and there was grief as we adjusted to the reality of marriage versus both of our expectations. I began a master's program at Georgetown University to become a family nurse practitioner, and we thought we were on the path to fulfilling all of our desires.

Ben was finally working in his field of interest, and I was pursuing my dream career. But around the corner were more heartaches as I miscarried our first two babies, and I wondered if my deep desire for motherhood would ever be fulfilled. As you can guess, I eventually delivered a healthy baby. And yet I entered motherhood via a traumatic c section and difficulties nursing him. The journey of parenthood continues to bring disappointments and losses all while providing our highest joys and delights.

I have learned that the more people I choose to love, and sometimes wrongfully put my hope in, the more open I am to pain and suffering. And yet, I was created for love and community, even in a fallen world. When COVID hit in 2020, I was working part time as a nurse practitioner, and Ben was still in his starter job in Baltimore without much hope of advancement unless he could switch jobs, which was proving more difficult than we had anticipated. Our two boys had been in daycare four days a week, and suddenly, we had to both work and provide childcare. My job was in a toxic environment, and I knew I would not be there for much longer, so I thought maybe I would just quit to stay home.

But Ben was concerned with that plan since he was so dissatisfied with his career progress, so I decided to use my time wisely. The pandemic regulations meant no one was allowed to come in for specialty visits except for emergencies, and since I worked in urology, I had a lot of free time at work, and I began searching for jobs for Ben all over the country. I presented him with some options, of which he applied to a few, and he received offers from two companies, both located in Indianapolis. It was kind of a no brainer for our family. Let's move.

Although we were living a life in Maryland that sounded good on paper, it was ultimately unfulfilling and felt temporary. The risk of moving seemed very worth it, except for one thing, moving over 500 miles from my family. I sacrificed being close to my family of origin for the family we were creating, and we began planning a very stressful move across states during a pandemic. Ben moved ahead of us to begin his new job and lived in an Airbnb, during which time he house hunted in the evenings and on weekends while I finished up my job and prepared our house for market. It sold in one weekend, thank you pandemic housing market, and after getting our stuff packed into pods, the kids and I joined Ben to live the Airbnb life until we moved into our house in Zionsville.

But following God's plan to move here has not meant life is a dream. I still struggle with loneliness and questions about my career. I've lost two more babies to miscarriage and we've walked through our hardest season of marriage while living here. Parenthood has continued to throw us for loops and we are still trying to establish a support network without my parents nearby. While we have been intentionally building a life here for the past five years, a part of me always feels drawn back to Pennsylvania.

I've noticed that each loss I experience uncovers a new layer of grief that was created at the time of Dave's accident. That day, a huge meteor hit my life, and I am still uncovering fragments that reveal my fears, doubts, insecurities, and heartaches all over again. Even now, twenty three years later and a married mom to three kids, I am still wrestling with resentment toward and responsibility for Dave. We currently live over 500 miles away from my parents and Dave. He is well cared for by them, and a few loyal caregivers, but their situation is inflexible.

They miss out on being a part of our lives here due to the need to be there with Dave, and while I think of one day moving back to PA, I'm still working through if that's actually because of a desire to be there or an obligation. For most of my life, I've not really known the difference. Prioritizing Dave was what we always did and still do because he has always been the most vulnerable among us, but there is a cost to that, And although I wish I could tie this all up in a pretty bow, it's actually still kind of loose and messy. My journey of loss and how it has defined me is still being written, or rather, God is still revealing it to me. I suppose there is a pretty bow.

There is a bow made of thorns that has been wrapped around my whole life and redeems it all. I live for the day when I will see clearly how God is making all things new and using this mess for his glory. But honestly, I still see dimly. I still walk through pain and grief wondering how it all makes sense and wishing things were different. I lay it all before the Lord holding nothing back, and he shores it up and coats it with his truth giving me all the mercies I need for a new day.

Great is his faithfulness. Thank you.