You Are Loved.

I received a message from a customer today and it just melted my heart.  She said:

"got our custom butterfly dress in the mail today. OMG its so gorgeous. Cant wait to get it on my daughter. Thank you for taking my order. Our first Sugarplum Cutie and definitely not our last."

It's messages like that which really make me smile and remind me why I'm in business.  You women who have bought from me (whether it was one time or over and over) have helped me to provide my family with a little extra income, and allowed me to stay home and raise my children myself as my husband and I feel like I've been called to do.

You see, 2012 was a challenging year for my husband and me.  It was especially hard at the end of it.  We lost a baby in September which was devastating and confusing and hard and just really an emotional time for us.  I know we're not the only people to have experienced a loss like this, and I know, sadly, we will not be the last.  Praise the Lord that He was there for us to help us through and be our strength through that time.  We serve an amazing God who will use seemingly "bad" situations for His glory, and I was certainly drawn nearer to Him through it all.  I kept feeling like the Lord was trying to tell me something through all of this and so I prayed about it, and I finally felt like I was able to figure it out.  He wanted me to know I wasn't alone even though we were miles and miles from friends and family, He wanted me to know that He was never going to let me down and He'd be the one thing that was constant, always.  But, above all, He wanted me to know, "You are loved."

Then, in October, my husband was blind sided with a job loss due to the economy with no warning whatsoever.  We were then forced to make plans to pack up and move our entire house and family within a week.  We had zero funds for a moving truck, moving boxes, and all the other expenses that come with a cross country move and it was the women that have been such amazing Sugarplum supporters that banded together, held a charity auction for us, and gifted us over $800 to get us where we needed to go.  Our needs were also met by various family members sending money or even driving cross country to help us with just a day or 2 notice.  God used each and every one of those people, whom I've never actually met, to meet our needs and show us just how loved we are.  Everyday a new need was met and most of the time, before my husband and I were actually aware that we were going to have a need.  It was absolutely amazing.  We held so tight to the Lord's promise of provision in our lives and man did He come through in a BIG BIG way.  once again, I was reminded:

Then, a few days after the job loss, we found out we were pregnant again which was a huge blessing for us and just really filled us with joy because we fully believe what the Bible says about children.  Psalm 127:3 says "Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from Him."  We knew that we were going to be met with some people (even family members) that would question us and our attitudes and why we were so happy to be pregnant without a steady income.  But, what we knew that they didn't was that no matter the circumstance, the situation, or how things may look on the outside; children come straight from God Himself to us.  They are our present, our gift, and we will always rejoice over a pregnancy and a new life from Him.  I was once again reminded,

I also feel led to tell you the same thing.  YOU ARE LOVED!  You may feel overwhelmed or lost. Maybe you feel like you are failing miserably as a mom or as a wife, maybe you feel like there's no hope for you.  Those are all lies we tell ourselves, we get lost in them and start drowning in them.  It's time we picked ourselves up and held tight, so tight, to the fact that God loves us.  He loves us with a love that cannot be measured. He loves us more than we love our children, more than we love our husbands, and more than we could love anything else in this world.  He loves us so much that he killed his own son for us.  As I have experienced the loss of a child, I cannot imagine willingly sending my own son to be beaten, tortured, and killed in the worst way, for the benefit of any one person, let alone the whole world.  He loves you and He wants to pull you through whatever you're going through right now, give it up to Him ladies.  Lay it all at His feet.  He'll carry it all for you so you don't have to.  You can't do it alone, you weren't meant to.  He wants to help, let Him.  YOU ARE LOVED.