Easter

Even though this was Ian and Jovie's first ever egg hunt it only took them a few seconds to catch on. Easter egg hunts are a whole lot more fun with 3! 

This Easter meant so many things, it's significance of having a Savior has always made it my favorite day, that alone makes for a day full of rejoicing. This Easter was three months to the day that Ian and Jovie were placed in our arms. And we especially are very aware of the celebration of us being HOME from the hospital with a baby who's heart is now restored.

The love of Christ for us was more real to me this year than ever. Jovie's open heart surgery was incredibly scary and emotional. I remember vividly standing in my closet at 4am getting dressed the day of her surgery and just going through the motions but in disbelief that the day had come. I remember thinking that if I could, I would trade places with her. I would have saved her from having to go through all of this if I could have. When the surgery was over Jovie spent 3 days in the cardiac ICU. She was sleeping for almost all of that time and I spent hours in a chair beside her just staring at her. She was the most beautiful sleeping baby despite all the tubes and IVs everywhere and my heart could have exploded just looking at her. Even now thinking about it I am getting so emotional. I love her so much and in the moment that my own child's life was in question, I couldn't hardly stand the amount of love I felt... when people use the expression "they were about to burst" that was never truer. Love is powerful and I can't say that I've ever experienced it quite like I did last week. Going through this experience I have felt overwhelmed by a simple truth I've known all my life. 

“Jesus [loves] me; this I know

For the Bible tells me so.

The Love of Jesus Christ:

"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19)

How, exactly, does Christ love us? 

"The love of Jesus Christ manifested itself in His giving Himself, laying down His life for us. His was a self-sacrificing love. The death of Christ was not the only sacrifice He made, but the crowning one. His whole life was a sacrifice, from the manger to the cross. His becoming man at all was a sacrifice of immeasurable greatness and meaning.” (A. Torrey - see Philippians 2:6-7.)

 Nothing can separate you from Jesus’ love for you. Nothing can stop you from being loved forever. We don't deserve it. We are helpless without it. His love is invincible.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39)