encouragement – Page 2 – Overcoming odds, fulfilling destinies…

Because the World Needed him…

My oldest son was given a grave diagnosis 14 years ago, insulin injections for life. Since then he has defeated the lies his sickness told him and has risen to the call God had for his life.

June 19, 2016June 19, 2016 Ami Beth CrossLeave a comment

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My oldest son Caleb’s job on this earth is to prove adversity as lies and disparage. And he has done so further than I could have ever imagined after he grew sicker than I could have dreamed at the tender age of four.

A season that threatened to take my first born son away gutted me deeper than anything had up to that point in my life. Caleb was four years old and deeply energetic and gregarious. His smile was larger than the world and his body seemed invincible. Until it wasn’t.

He ate all the time, yet lost weight. He was tired yet couldn’t keep his eyes open and vomited more than he didn’t. My boy was sick. And I was scared. More like terrified.

This was before “Google” and “WebMD.” The days where we simply had to trust our doctors, and they were telling me he was okay. But my son was far from okay, he was leaving us and I knew it. I feared cancer, I felt the worst knock on my door that whispered to me, “you are going to bury a child.”

I demanded a blood test.

Indeed, he was sick, he was declared a type one diabetic, insulin dependent for life.

My immediate response was relief, I get to keep him! I don’t have to bury a child, he can live with diabetes!

After a week-long stay in the hospital nursing my dying son’s body back to life we faced a scary yet comforting reality; that our lives would never be the same, but we did in fact, get to keep him. He wasn’t leaving us, he just had to try a lot harder than other kids who weren’t burdened with constant insulin shots and finger pokes. Endless carb counting and ketoacidosis monitoring. I would wake up in sheer panic at 3 am running to his bedroom with a juice box in hand terrified his blood sugar had dipped too low, and more times than I’d like to admit it saved his young life.

Exodus 23:25~Worship the LORD your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you.

Cameron his brother closest in age, was his diabetes manager. His dad and I nurtured him to health and held each other up as we grieved the failure of our boy’s body. Later my husband and I divorced and Caleb’s step dad took over the main scheduling of diabetes appointments, insisting that Caleb be placed on the latest technology, an insulin pump. Alan called and called until he found a doctor who could help Caleb in Madison, Wisconsin. We came together as a family, rallied around our Caleb as families do.

June 18, 2002, will always be special. It both saved my son and took something from us, our innocence. But in the midst of struggle and health issues, I can say this…my son has overcome impossible odds.

He was told he couldn’t, yet he said he could.

Caleb is a black belt in Taekwondo…a fighter indeed. He was recently third in his graduating class, winner of more awards than I can count. He is smart, logical, and deeply emotive as God has given him the gift of song.

My son is smarter than 99.999% of his peers, could be a doctor, a lawyer, a chemist, or scholar, yet God has laid upon his heart to be a music pastor.

And I told him to follow his calling. If God says to live a life of touching people’s life through worship and song, it is just as powerful (or more) than performing a surgery.

My boy is on the brinks of his own life. He is ready to go into the next part of his life and he takes his disease with him… as he owns it, it doesn’t own him.

Fourteen years ago we met type one diabetes. We welcomed needles and medicinal liquid into our lives because we had to. But today we are blessed. Simply because we got to keep him.

The world got to keep him. And oh, so many lives he has touched already. And more he will with his heart, drive, and spirit to serve the God he loves and praises every day.

As a mother who loves her babies more than life itself I am left humbled that God chose me to be a type one diabetic mom. I’m honored deeper than you’ll ever know that the world gets to keep my boy, my joy, my first born child who has been chosen for a purpose greater than I could have ever imagined…to defeat the lies of his disease in order to serve his God.

Songs of inspiration…

Caleb wrote this song as an expression of his testimony of strength, grace, and perseverance that God has given him along the way…

The Testimony

Hearing the testimonies of some amazing young people recently made me introspect and consilidate my own story…my reason for praise in midst of darkness.

June 13, 2016June 24, 2016 Ami Beth Cross1 Comment

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I was raised in a Christian home. Kinda. My grandparents were my primary caregivers from age four until nine, and we went to church every Sunday morning. Yet I longed for my mom and dad who were too busy living their own lives with their other families to care. At least that is how I felt. And still do.

While doodling on the offering envelope with the smell of oak pews and mold in my essence I caught words in the sermon that yelled the consequences of not knowing Jesus as my personal Savior. This revelation terrified me as I didn’t have a savior and the thought of flesh-eating fire was a little…well…scary.

So I accepted Jesus into my heart in the depths of the night, in the suburbs of Chicago as a little girl who had wide eyes of fear of a God who could abandon her and send her to hell as fast as the night turned to day. It seemed real enough given my circumstances thus far in life.

Fast forward ten years where I was given the opportunity to truly experience Jesus through worship. Music in its truest form has a way of convicting the heaviest of hearts and breaking through the thickest of oppositions.

I was sixteen, passionate, and in love with Jesus, proclaiming His Love and shouting His mercy at every turn. I wrote an award-winning poem, I sang in worship, played my flute to his honor Him and brought the Word of God whenever I was asked in the form of speaking.

I. Was. On fire.

Pain and parental abandonment meant nothing in the face of Christ’s unconditional love and that can be the raw beauty of a life story, the light is outweighed by the darkness. Love gives way to hate and we can be set free…

I met my first husband at Intervarsity Christian Fellowship and we praised our God together. Our testimony alone was the place we were despite the places we had come from. And our spirits were full.

Until tragedy struck our young lives and instead of turning toward Him we fled. Faster than the wind and swifter than a famine. We abandoned our faith in exchange for anger and resentment of a God who had always given us all we needed. We left Him and neglected His Grace because we couldn’t see The Testimony in the face of devastation.

We had a child, a baby boy with black hair and big eyes encompassing possibility that I just couldn’t leave in a mess of complications filled with single parenthood. So I followed the journey of godlessness, believing every last lie I was fed. We were a family filled with love and questions of how God could bring tribulation to good people, and how Jesus could leave us unwashed with His grace?

I lived breathed and knew secularism. It suited me, being a strong independent woman who knew who she was and where she wanted to go…on her own. My future seemed bright and filled with joy and promise. As the enemy screams so you succumb to the lies.

Eventually, divorce came and left me ragged, turmoil knocked at my door and Jesus never felt so far away. I married again, a Canadian with a heart bigger than hearts themselves; just not enough to save me.

Because people never can save us.

We had a baby together in the cold of March and we felt the loveliness that a child comes from. Yet we didn’t praise our God who gave, we simply just didn’t...

Then a year later we lost a baby in the warmth of spring with the songs of birds and promise. Jaden Hope went on to the next and I hated God more now than ever.

“See!” I cried. “You are not my God.” No God would take the one thing I love the most, my children.

Yet, eighteen months later I found out my twenty-three-week old baby boy would die too.

My anger peaked, my faith diminished further into a blur of reality and existence, a place where no one knows which is more powerful.

“This is why I don’t believe!” I bellowed into the night’s sky trying to figure it all out.

Why? Why just why?

He told me that I was not broken that I was filled. And I shouted, “leave me alone, I don’t know what you want from me!”

Days later a dear friend from my youth prophesied over me telling me that God had provision over my life that I would find Him again and be even more of a powerful tool than I was in my youth. My eyes rolled and my heart churned in a cadence of anger. “You are not using me, God, for you have wrecked me. You’ve taken from me. You’ve left me for dead. I hate you.”

Yet I didn’t hate, or regret, or demolish my God. I was finding my way back through His grace.

For He had a plan.

Four years later as I gave birth to a perfectly healthy baby girl in the trenches of a cold December Wisconsin afternoon and then I saw His grace come full circle. The hospital room was filled with people watching the unfolding of God’s promise and Truth as my tears met my husband’s forming a perfect Rainbow, letting us know we will never be stricken by the same tragedy twice and that we had finally met our Grace.

My climb back truly began somewhere in between. My older sons at that time immersed themselves at Journey Church in Kenosha, Wisconsin after I brought them there instinctively after a major life crisis struck.

The sound of song flowed beautifully throughout my home as my oldest son, the black haired baby who had grown up found a passion for music as I had as a teen so many years ago. My second son Cameron bled the Word of God and even though I wanted it back only in small pieces God always had a plan.

They begged us to come to church and I fought it until I just couldn’t deny the gift of grace on my life any longer. The testimony begged to be told, the ending needed to be unveiled. Because God told me one cold February night at Saturday church as Pastor Jordan sang and the angels watched that it was time to come home.

To fulfill the prophesy allowing my life to be used in a greater manner than it was in my youth. It was time, and He told that through my suffering He was using me, waiting for me, but mostly, loving me.

And…He really was all along the way.

Luke 15:32… My son,the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
My life isn’t perfect, I struggle and then I fall. I get it and then I don’t. But through my vision of loss and redemption, I see that my testimony alone is the place I am despite the place I came.

Please enjoy the song that inspired this blog post…and may its words soak into your heart as you overcome odds and fulfill your destiny…

I’ve never met a love like this…

June 6, 2016June 7, 2016 Ami Beth Cross1 Comment

12182634_1694533300792622_509578852822680727_o My eighteen-year-old son is done, completed, and finished being raised by me. He’s flying out of the nest into a freedom of opportunity and into the light of promise and the guidance of a God who is good and has endless Grace and mercy upon him. Yet he just doesn’t realize how much…just yet.

I brought him into his world and wept at the greatness of a God who could bless me with such a gift, a child of my own. I gave praise all night as he slept peacefully, knowing my fight for him flowed deeper than I could have ever imagined that March evening in 1998.

I also wept at his bedside at age four, when I thought he may not be destined to continue life on this earth. He was apparently sick, tattered, and worn. Type One Diabetes was the call, insulin injections the prescriptions. For life. His body was failing, yet his spirit never faltered. His joy never left him…not once.

God had plans for my boy. Great, great plans. Far beyond my recognition at the time, only enough peace to keep me afloat. God has a way of doing so.

His life transformed in a beautiful scrapbook of panoramic magnitude in front of me quickly. I began compiling the awards fast, the accolades kept flowing in. While I kept chasing my own dreams, he seemed to chase his own in record speed.

Fast forward to today to his high school graduation. My boy is the strong dream chaser I taught him to be. But the one thing that leaves me empty is…now he is left without…me.

And the thing that leaves me really empty is.. is he is fine without…me.

He doesn’t want me.

He doesn’t need me.

God tells me, it has nothing to do with me.

It is about what God has done through me, with me, yet not about me.

As his mom, I fall to my knees. Knowing that I’ve always been there for him, at the hospital bed of his birth, and the hospital bed of sickness that wanted to take him from me. Through all the highs and lows of his life, It was me that was undeniably there for him. I cheered at the top of my voice as they called his name with every distinguished honor to proclaim third in his class. THIRD!

Yet, I cried tonight after it was all said and done.

Not tears of overwhelming pride because of his grandeur. Of leading worship at church, countless awards, leadership, scholarships, etc…But simply due to the fact that he was no longer mine to keep.

God has prepared him for greatness and I was his first home…and now I realize the birds nest is empty. For he is flying much further than I could have ever dreamed.

After realizing that he really doesn’t want to spend time with me, or listen to my lessons any longer, I wandered to my husband and sobbed.

My husband met me where I was and he said, “I’ve never met a love like this, he is who he is because of you. He is blessed to have you as his mother.”

I sobbed more.

My boy is blessed and I am blessed more because of who God has made him, forever plus some more.

10 Reasons Why my Facebook Life is Fake

We all are guilty of taking 51 shots on our iPhones in order to get that one selfie that makes us look incredibly skinny, pretty and oh so perfect! That is the lure of publishing our lives on social media, we are finally in control of our lives that in reality we have no control over what so ever. So here it is folks, the really bad selfie of me!

May 31, 2016May 31, 2016 Ami Beth Cross3 Comments

I am imperfect. We all are. Yet I feel social media is the perfect medium to allow our imperfect beings to show a false reality of what we really want to be seen…I admit it, right here, right now I fall into this category. In the depths of loving the selfie taking, word choice moments that may have formed an unrealistic vision of who I really am, I want to call myself out, to let you see a glimpse of true reality.

I’m sorry if you feel lied to but this is really who I am…

1. A divorced woman. Yup. I failed at marriage the first go around. Indeed, my ex and I are still friends, we chose kindness not hate. But we are still not one. We are left nothing but..painfully divorced as a couple. Leaving my two older sons with a mom and dad who didn’t keep to our original marriage vows, who are scattered amongst the wreckage of the rest of the world.

2. I am an author. I get to tell amazing stories for a living. Yet in order to do so, I have lived a lifetime of hardships that allow my words to flow from my ache-ridden heart the way that they so fluently do.

3. I have lived with a painful eating disorder. I have posted pictures of a skinny skeleton of myself from my past with a story of the torture that comes with being so thin. There is always at least one in the crowd who tells me how “great” I looked. Yes, it looks great to live on 400 calories a day and to succumb to the pain that comes with the pressures of perceived perfection.

4. I have no clue what I want to be in this life…still. I’m 41 years old and have no idea what I’m going to be when I grow up. Most women at my age can identify with being a stay at home mom, or having a career. I am still in-between and after a few unpredicted situations of having to take a late stand in life against abusive people, I am still finding out just who I am and where I am supposed to be.

5. I have a child who is leaving and one who is just starting out. My oldest son of four children is getting ready to go to college and I am so very proud, beyond belief! Yet, accepting he is leaving my nest is more difficult than I could have ever imagined. I want to chase after him every time he comes home this last year he is under my roof and give him one last hug, just in case he should forget what it feels to have my arms wrapped around his neck. Yet…I have a baby girl who I have dreamed of having my whole life who is just three years old. She is just starting out, the breath of life is fresh and every new discovery is a light in her eye. As much as I embrace it, there are times I wonder what it would be like to be simply saying goodbye to the teenager who begs for freedom, not starting all over again. A sign that we are never truly content with what we have, are we?

6. Depression, it hunts me down when I least expect it. Ins and outs. Ebbs and flows. It always finds me. End of story.

7. I’m a figure skater. I always wanted to be on the ice, and made the dream come true at the age of 30. But by choice not by recognition of simply wanting to be something I wasn’t. And I’ve fallen more than I’ve landed. I have more bruises than pretty dresses. Anything worth while comes with hard work that is unthinkable to most…

8. I have a love-hate relationship with any form of alcohol. Being an ultra-controlling Virgo, I absolutely hate the idea of anything controlling me. Submersed in the freeing feeling of one too many martinis I have to ask myself, is this where I really want to be? Numbing the difficult day away, or truly feeling it through good times and bad? Scrolling along on social media all we see is ways “wine” is the only solution to a difficult day, yet is that really any kind of a solution?

9. I don’t speak to my father. Because it is healthy. And that alone hurts. Way more than I ever lead on.

10. My husband and I aren’t perfect. We take date night selfies. We post our dinner recipes for the night, and show you our children’s pretty faces, but please know that we do fight. We clash. We are at odds, more than we’ll ever let you know. But if anything in my life that is imperfect, my marriage is the one thing I’m the most proud of because no matter how flawed I am, no matter how much I struggle to find balance, my husband chases that dream with me. And he perfects my imperfections with his own struggle, and he forces me to see my beauty more than any single human being ever has. Simply what we all truly need in this life is that one person who has our back. And that is what I don’t say enough on social media, that I’m flawed, I hurt, but through it all, I have a partner who is too. He holds my hand and says, “we will make it through the struggle…together.”

The Daughters and Me

Recently, I went to a Christian woman’s conference hoping to make some new friends. Little did I know I’d end up spending the weekend with some pretty amazing millennials.

May 30, 2016May 30, 2016 Ami Beth CrossLeave a comment

13131540_1767702466809038_6790292382361851216_o The term daughter can bring an uncertain sting to a girl who has begged and pleaded for an eternity to be loved by the hand that created her. At the feet of their own father they cry out, “love me, see me, want me.” But when their cries are fruitless there is a question of validity and an intense breach of trust being forged and often the opening of a lifetime wound.

Recently I attended a women’s conference called Shine in which I was so excited to go to I could barely stand it. Then as it approached I became more and more filled with the fear that haunts us when we least expect it. The foreboding that can hold us back from greatness.

I found myself afraid because I was going to this mega celebration…alone.

My mother always taught me that going at something alone is brave, that it builds character. I’ve tested this theory, this life lesson. I’ve gone to a movie alone, dinner party of one, Starbucks with yours truly, simply to see if anyone would actually see me. And guess what, never once did anyone care that I was in fact, this huge big smile sitting at a table alone. Nope, no one cares. Because we are all so inside ourselves our own complicated mess of complications.

And this created an inner dialogue that was so intense. God would say to me: why do you care that you are alone? For you have me and I created this interestingly smart woman who has all the potential in the world.

Even when I didn’t want to hear it. He was there telling me that I was enough. That I do not need other people to validate me because I am well…in fact a Daughter.

That may be easy to accept when the people who are supposed to validate you, don’t do their jobs.

But often times they don’t. Our fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers can leave us unloved and dry of life-sustaining water for years upon decades. And when that happens waiting on God to provide at a huge women’s conference where everyone going is there with a stunning woman on their arm is somewhat…daunting.

I almost didn’t go.

God asked me, “Why are you doubting?”

I paused. And He read my heart singing:

Seek Bravery, not Fear.

But I’m scared to be alone. I hate not being accepted. I’m insecure even though I may seem larger than life. I am a facade.

No~you are greater than any comparison you will conclude and I will show you as long as you believe, have faith, and go at it alone.

Yet God knowing me, truly reading that I am not the “alone” girl I had been in the child of my past I received a text from an extraordinary young woman later that day.

She said she wanted to sit with me at Shine.

Twenty-three years my junior I wasn’t sure. My inner insecurity said,
“Don’t ruin her fun.”
“You are old.”
“You aren’t, hip, yo.”
“You aren’t good enough.”
“You should be alone because no one really loves you.”

Against my inner demons I texted back,

I’d love that.

And so I embarked on a life-changing weekend sitting with the daughters of our future, the difference makers of the days ahead. The future mothers, friends, wives, leaders, lovers of life that are about to embark on the truth they are being called into.

I can say there is a lot to be spoken of spending time with the generation that follows you.

Looking at the youth ready to face their own opportunities I relished in the excitement their eyes reflected back at me as they shared the call they felt were on their lives.

I met amazing young woman number one who has aspirations of becoming an author and public speaker.

Inspirational strong young woman number two wants to be a midwife specializing in women experiencing miscarriage or stillbirth.

Dynamite girl number three aspires to be a worship pastor, one of the most captivating ways to meet God. And~has a calling on her life to write her life story which involves a broken relationship with her father.

Okay, for those of you who don’t know me, get ready for some provision…

I’m a best selling author and a national public speaker who has spoken in front of thirty thousand people.

I have lost two baby boys, one at eighteen weeks gestation and one at twenty-three both due to chromosomal abnormalities.

And lastly, my oldest son leads worship, touching thousands with his passion and fervor for both music and well…God. And I also have a horribly broken relationship with my father that guts me every day.

Wait…What?!?!

And I thought I was going to this thing by myself?! Are we ever truly alone in this life as long as God is in charge? Resoundingly NO! Our life story runs through and through with a beautiful symphony of a song that weaves in and out past the years of pain and conclusion. It is beauty. It is God. It is a community of women. It breaks barriers of age, judgment, and class. Yet only if we let it. These girls welcomed me and we soaked each other up like precious water after a hundred year drought.

We can learn a little from the youth, can’t we ladies who have lived a little life?

My weekend ended on a high. After I left my girls I paused and decided that I needed to get a few “selfies” with my date for the weekend. Me.

In that, I met two amazing women (a little closer in age to me this time) who had attended the conference together and then an amazing conversation took place. I told them that I came alone. But am leaving knowing I’m never alone, that no matter the demographic or the anticipation, God gives you what you need and what is needed from you.

I told them that it doesn’t matter who I am or what I’ve done that without togetherness it doesn’t work.
I shared with them that I wrote a little book called, The Return to Happiness.

One of the girls said she knows several women who have suffered pregnancy loss and would love to connect them with a resource such as my book.

I cried out, knowing I had been alone losing my babies yet when women unite, it is always better together, stronger, and far more powerful.

I made new friends in that moment and left the weekend behind filled to the rim with love, community, and possibility.

Yet I left with the youth deeply embedded on my heart.

The daughters and I worshiped, loved, and learned from one another far from fear of lost trust, abandonment or pain. Yet gave us more than we could have ever anticipated. Leaving us with an overwhelming joy and praise blanketing us all, knowing that we are in fact better together. Forever.