How Did I Not Know About this Family?!

Ever since the first day I created my blog last November, I have had that quote by Derek Loux written at the top.  My dear friend, Shannon, read it to me sometime last year and I knew that if I were to create a blog, I'd want to put it somewhere on it, so she emailed it to me.  Fast forward several months later to this week.  My husband, Jamey, randomly (or not so randomly) decided to google Derek Loux's name and he ended up stumbling across his family's blog.  I just found out that Derek Loux himself has over 10 children, most of whom are adopted, with his wife, Renee, and that he passed away last year in a car accident at the age of 37.  On his gravestone were these words:

I was overwhelmed reading this family's blog, because I know that the only way that Renee is able to raise 12 children, many with special needs, without her husband, is by the incredible power of the Holy Spirit at work within her.  This is radical, Christlike living.  I am once again blown away by how Christ "sets the lonely in families", and am encouraged yet again to fall on my knees before this Awesome God and beg Him to do in my life what there's no way that I can do in my own strength to defend orphans and be like His Son.  One day, I would like for these same words to appear on my gravestone:

Beloved Wife, Mother, Daughter and Sister

Defender of Orphans

Champion of Justice

She ran hard and finished well

11 Timothy 4:7

I know God wants to use each of you to "Defend the Fatherless..." (Isaiah 1:17), and I'm committed to praying that He would move in your hearts and reveal to you how He wants this to look in your life.

As one adoptive mother said at the Summit a couple of weeks ago, "If God's definition of pure religion  is to look after orphans and widows (see James 1:27), then we have some work to do."