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Well, welcome Amanda, thank you. Thanks for coming down to Dr. Man, let's hear it down from you. Amanda, do you want to just tell us a little bit about yourself and your children? Yep. This week was a significant week in our family, I'm maybe longer having 18 inches. My youngest turned 20, and 21 on the same day, and then it's 22.

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Well, it's easy to remember after your option. That's a pretty good achievement to have got through all the teenage years. Absolutely. As well as being a mum, what else fills your day, Amanda? I welcome a lot of things I do during the week. I try to keep Monday's as a quite kind of day for myself,

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which usually includes washing and chopping. I work in study preparation, I don't usually interact with a lot of people on Monday's, but it was a bit of a quiet day. Tuesday's is five of a study, and then I help in the two jobs at Miranda. Wednesday's I work at More College, Thursday's I work at tennis. Friday's is a variety of things in the weekend and I'll do it again.

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Okay. When you get a chance to relax, what are some of the things that you really enjoy doing? I enjoy tennis. I do a play tennis. That for me is a real outlet during the week. I get physically exhausted by the end of it, and then I have to try my best study on Thursday nights, which is pretty hard. But I enjoy that. Relaxing.

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Yep. What's one of your favourite ways? I do enjoy. I don't enjoy science fiction, so I haven't seen any of the Star Wars or the Lord of the Rings or the Harry Potter sort of thing. I'm not that sort of person, so I don't enjoy doing any kind of movies.

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I'm not that kind of person, but I'm not that kind of person. I'm not that kind of person, but I'm not that kind of person, but I'm not that kind of person. I'm not that kind of person, but I'm not that kind of person, but I'm not that kind of person, but I'm not that kind of person. I'm not that kind of person, but I'm not that kind of person. And Amanda, you're going to share with us something of your life's genius since Marco died. How long ago was that, and how long did you have been married at the time?

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Yeah. Marco died in the past six years, this November, so it's about five and a half now, and we've been married for nearly 20 years. Alright, well thanks for coming. It's your cue. Thank you, Natalie. Thank you, and a relt with the invitation. My hope this evening is that a lot of the things I share and say to you will be things that will be helpful to you.

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To deal with experiences that you're involved in in your own personal lives, areas of loss in whatever form, grief in whatever form in your own lives. And in the lives of people that you share in relationship with in your lives, your families, your friends. I want to acknowledge that everyone here has their own story, and that everyone's story of pain and loss is very special for them. And everyone's personal experiences are significant and personal and valid.

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The next little one, I just want to share with you something of my journey over the last five and a half years. And to testify in that to God's grace and to God's love and to God's faithfulness in what has been and still continues to be a very hard and painful life. And very different life to what I had envisioned. I haven't kept a journal. Some people keep diaries and journals. I haven't kept a journal over these years, but I've kept some very special friends.

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And these special and dear friends have enabled me to continue to remember life, to talk over things with them. And I've been very blessed to be able to share my life with these people. I also want to just what I've prepared for tonight to share, to paint some thoughts over God's word, to bring to you tonight some verses which have been very special to me, particularly over these last years, but prior to that as I walked with God. These verses have become, I guess, particularly special in these last few years.

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When I speak words of God's comfort, there are all our testament messages, our testament passages, and I think God spoke very clearly to His people very personally through the Old Testament. Their verses which remind me of God's comfort and His faithfulness and His love, difficult concepts to hold onto in the face of the death of the loved one, a beloved husband, to me, our three, now adult child, only some and much loved pastor to many of the church that we've longed to. So firstly I'd like to read to you Psalm 121.

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I lift up my eyes to the hills, from where will my hope come? My hope comes from the Lord who has made heaven and earth. He will not let your thought be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. He who keeps Israel will mine a slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shape at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.

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The Lord who will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. The Lord will keep you going out and you're coming in from this time forward and forevermore. From the day of Marko's death this sun has been one that I've read and reread regularly. And one that I've cried my way through, one that I've prayed my way through. In the initial shock of Marko's death I couldn't think what the rest of my life could possibly look like.

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I still can't. It all seemed so unreal, so overwhelming. So I kept going back to this sun to be reminded again and again that my help was to come from the Lord. That he would be my keeper and he would keep my life forevermore. I never faced a greater test to my faith.

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If for years I had believed that sun, that I was now reading over and over again, that he would not let my foot be moved, that he is my keeper, that he will keep my life, that he is a faithful God, then I needed to believe it now. I believed and put my faith in trust in the Lord Jesus when I was 13. God was faithful to me then. Through my teenage years and through my high school I grew in my faith and attended youth group fellowship. And God was faithful to me then. After leaving school I was involved in youth group and leadership in Marko at some Clements at Mossman and God was faithful to us then. Marko and I were married in May 1980 and our three children were born very soon after and in fairly quick succession.

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And all that God was faithful. Marko studied at more college for full time ministry for four years and in all that time God was faithful and gracious. We finished college and went out into parish ministry to the parish at San Susie for two years and then on to Miranda for nine years until the night that Marko suddenly died of a heart attack. At 3 a.m. on that Monday morning of the 29th of November 1999, was God unfaithful? Had He changed? Had He changed His nature and His character? This God who doesn't know the slumber nor sleep. He will keep your life. He will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forward. Had He changed? Was He now unfaithful?

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Why did Marko die? Is indeed a very big question and God is big enough for all of our big questions and sometimes He gives us a big answer. Let me read my next verses to you from Isaiah chapter 55. For my thoughts are not your thoughts nor are your ways my ways says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. I don't think we'll always have our why questions answered not simply anyway. Sometimes between Marko's death and now I move from why to how?

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This was clarified for me in October of 2003. I went to a women's conference on singleness and her lowest rabie from the United States speak. Over 30 years previously she was in her 30s and her husband died suddenly in a tragic ablune, an accident. She had two young daughters and her husband was killed almost in front of the rest of her watching him in this ablune. She hopefully during that talk talked about rather than dwelling on why did this happen? It was helpful for her to move to be working as time progressed on to how, how, how am I now going to live? How am I now going to live without Marko? Is what I've been having to work through the last few years, given that the Lord has been my helper and my keeper and the faithful one?

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Lois's talk and the book she's written have been very helpful. The book, which I have copy of, is appropriately titled "When Your Soul Eggs." Lois writes about living after the death of her husband and the pain that never really goes away. She said that peace and pain can coexist. Peace is not the absence of pain but the presence of God in our lives. Peace is not the absence of pain but the presence of God in our lives. We received many, many sympathy cards and letters and notes from people in the days and weeks and months following Marko's death and I've kept all of them.

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Most of them were the traditional sympathy cards with a vinyl verse and a sound 23 on the front and verses inside. But one of them was a particular card. It was a hand-written card. It was playing on the inside and the person had risen. These very special verses from the vinyl which I was kind of familiar with. These verses have stuck with me. They weren't an instant comfort by any means but something to work with always. They're from the Old Testament, from the Book of Habakkuk. Chapter 3. "Though the food tree does not blossom and no fruit is on the vines, though the produce of the olden fails and the fields yield no food, though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls.

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Yet, I will rejoice in the Lord. I will exalt in the God of my salvation. God the Lord is my strength. He makes my fit like the fit of a deer and makes me treated on the heights. How could I? How would I continue to rejoice in the Lord and exalt in the God of my salvation and allow him to lead me?" What are some of those in my life now? The consequences of being without Marko. Though I did not have my best friend and partner beside me each day, we were married for nearly 20 years. Though I have had to bring the children through their adolescence and into adulthood over these five years. Though I have not had Marko to share these wonderful and significant years with.

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Though I have had to reorganize and reconsider my financial future. Though I have had to learn to live as a simple person and be responsible for everything myself. Though we will not grow old together. Yet, I will rejoice in the Lord and testify that he is my strength. He does make my fit like the fit of a deer and makes me treated on the heights. I certainly am doing things now that I have never resaged or whatever I have been doing. I will be my specialty like this tonight. He has put some very special people in my way, in my path and it has been a great privilege to share with many many people over these years.

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Obviously though, my loss of Marko has been quite significant and personally considerable, but to my children, they lost also of their father, not having their father to share their lives with, as very equally considerable. The children, as I said, who are now twenty, twenty-one and twenty-two, so though Ben, Sammy and Joel did not have their father there for their pastoral certificate is, and proudly says them graduate and finish school and get rest up. I am going to be interviewed for all of those things. Though Ben did not have his dad to encourage him through university and proudly saying graduate. Recently he graduated at the Great Hall of Sydney University. Though, Sammy will not have her father walk her down the aisle at her wedding, which is getting very close. She is getting married in just after three months.

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Though they will not have their dad as a grandfather for their children. Though Marko was not regularly on the sideline of Joel's soccer matches, he was a passionate Italian soccer supporter. Though, for Ben and Sammy, their dad was not there to celebrate their twenty-first birthday. Given all that, I believe the Lord has been very gracious to each of them and very, very faithful to each of them, in their grief, and enable them to rejoice in him and allow him to be their strength. They each profess a faith in the Lord Jesus. They attend church. We continue to go into church as it looks at Miranda because that was our home church. We have been there for nine years. They continue to attend a Bible study group. They are involved in news group leadership.

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People say that I have changed and that I am different somehow now, and I think I probably am. I come to see things differently and to think about things differently and probably often from a deeper spiritual perspective. You cannot see the one you love leave you in front of your eyes and move into eternity with God forever and not be changed by the God whom we cannot ignore and whom we must take very seriously. That is the purpose of our lives. To know God and to enjoy Him forever. All our goes doing that around 40 years earlier than we expected.

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That is what he is doing. I guess if I have changed, I probably have had to because life as I knew it has changed. Let me describe my life using the imagery of the sea. Before Marco died, my life was pretty smooth and flat, except for the odd way that we would just come up and follow me over. After Marco died, I was in rough seas, being tossed, going under, hanging on to friends, years all the time having the life jacket of Jesus and his Holy Spirit around me.

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Now the water is calmer again, the centre of the storm has passed, but there are still big waves that come up and dump me. There are little ones that come in and they just grow around the ankles. Also I get very tired from treating water constantly and keep you ahead of our water. Let me share some other special verses for you from Lamentations.

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My soul is bereft of peace. I have forgotten what happiness is. So I say, gone is my glory and all that I had hoped for from the Lord. The thought of my affliction is wormwood and gall. My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I called to mind and therefore I have hoped. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning, great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion says my soul, therefore I hope in Him.

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The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul that seeks Him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. And then for the Lord will not reject forever, although He causes grief, He will have compassion according to the abundance of His steadfast love, for He does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.

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I called on your name, my Lord, from the depths of the pit you heard my plea. Do not close your ear to my cry for help, but give me relief. You came near when I called on you. You said, do not fear. What do I fear? What are some of the things I fear? What are some of the things that are hard? I have times of feeling pretty down and overwhelmed. I haven't suffered from depression. Sometimes from the depths of the pit I fear being old and bitter and twisted and alone, learning this is sometimes a reality.

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Sometimes I fear the future, the unknown, and so I don't look too far ahead, let the days own troubles be enough for the day. I don't know what my life will be like when the kids get married and move out of home, assuming that's what they will do. I say it's all you started, my daughter is getting married in three months. In October this year and Ben, our eldest, is about to embark on a 12 month trip overseas to Germany and through Europe. Sometimes with the best of intentions, people say some things which are well-meaning, but sometimes people might say to me, you're only young, I hope you'll get married again.

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Let me say that's not on my horizon, the whole thought scares me actually. But who knows what lies ahead? God's thoughts are not our thoughts, nor are His ways our ways, but His grace will be sufficient for me. He is teaching me the secret of contentment, something to do with a great, wonderful song, trusted over. Have we sung that this weekend? What other things are hard? I'm learning to live as a single person in what really is a couple's world, even and maybe more prominently in the church. Continuing to live with my grief and pain, when I describe my pain now, because it's a pain that never really goes away. Ben, when I said earlier that peace and pain can coexist, peace is not the absence of pain, but the presence of God in our lives. At the beginning, my pain was what I probably would describe as acute pain, and now I guess it's more of chronic pain.

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And as Lois Rabie's book, so aptly describes it when your soul aches. That's not been melodramatic. I think it's a helpful way to describe the pain of the loss through death of someone very close. For the first couple of years, I used to think of and describe the effect of Marco's death like this. If, in marriage, we really believe that the two become one, then when Marco died, half of my body just got ripped off, ripped away, and I was totally living with that pain. As my broken heart is healing, I think more now, that as Marco and I were married for nearly 20 years, that during that time, part of Marco was growing in me. And now, part of Marco still continues to live in me, as I continue to organize my life, and parent the children, and get involved in ministry.

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That's not to say that the healing scar isn't still very painful when it gets bumped. Some of them are being bumped. Some of you might be aware of me describing my life now as a bucket, like a bucket full of water. And so long as no one bumps me, I can keep it in. I nearly got bumped a little earlier. And that's not a bad thing. I think it's healthy for the bucket to get tipped and to refresh. But I don't know what will bump it, and when I'll get bumped. Sometimes it's just a trickle, and sometimes it's an absolute gushing.

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So what are some of the things that tip my bucket? As I say, I never really know. Sometimes it's just busyness, and fatigue, and just something else being piled on. And that leads to tiredness and exhaustion. Other times it's just the anticipation of events, significant things like 21st Birthdays of this week. Significant things in our lives can often bump and tip my bucket, and that generally makes me more vulnerable. My bucket often can still get tipped when I'm just with old friends. Sometimes we've had for about 30 years, with whom we have many, many formed shared memories of NARCO.

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And they too, still grieving the loss of their friend. And so there's usually some laughter, as we remember, a particular incident of NARCO. Some people's memories of NARCO nearly always involve laughter. Something to laugh about. It's not that NARCO's expense. That was just the way it was. My bucket sometimes gets tipped when I'm just sitting in the car driving along and have the radio on, and I hear a significant fond song that we just sing on to, as a particular significant man. He gets tipped when people look nice to me, and ask me the hard question, say, "Where are you going?"

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Rather than they're just, "Hi, how are you?" There's always a short answer, or a long answer. And sometimes it's hard to know what to say. How much do people want to know? How much are they ready to hear and know? How much do they understand? How much have they walked for me already? How much do they already know what is the nature of our relationship and how appropriate is it to open up? And all this, while they're just waiting for an answer to this simple "How are you?" question.

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So sometimes if I just say, "I'm okay, thanks." It sounds pretty lame, really sometimes, but it usually does the job. At one level, life is okay. I'm getting one okay. God is very gracious. But at another level, if you pardon me, life really sucks. And now I just like to close with some very encouraging and stirring words that God spoke to Joshua through Joshua, to the people, following the death of Moses, who was their leader, as he used for lights were about to enter the Promised Land into Canaan.

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Their leader and their friend had died and left them, and they were embarking on a new land and a new life without him. I really feel that God is speaking these same words to me personally, and if he can indulge me, I even take the liberty of changing the word Moses to Marco. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you. Be strong, be strong and very courageous, be careful to act in accordance with all the law that my servant Moses commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, so that you may be successful wherever you go.

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This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth. You shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall be successful. I hereby command you, be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, Lord is made. For the Lord your God is with you, wherever you go. And finally, from Psalm 119, if your Lord had not been my delight, I would have perished in my misery. I will never forget your presence, for by them you have given me life. To God be the glory and come Lord Jesus come.

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Amanda thanks for coming and sharing with us. If you'd like to talk to Amanda she'll just be here for a little while after the session. I'm going to pray now, so please join me as we pray. Heavenly Father, Heavenly Father we thank you that you are the God who loves us and that you have given us the most precious gift of eternal life through your sublime Lord Jesus. Father we thank you that you are the God who walks through every day with us. And Father we thank you for the comfort of your Holy Spirit who lives in us and who gives us strength. Father we thank you that you walk with us through both joys and sorrows through struggles and pain and even the pain of death.

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Father we thank you for Amanda and for her testimony of your faithfulness to her. Father thank you that she has found comfort in you. Thank you Father that you have given her peace even with her pain. Father we pray that you might continue to strengthen and sustain Amanda and her children, rather that each one of them might continue to look to you, that they might continue to find joy and delight in your word. And Father that they might continue to be strengthened by your spirit in each day. And Father we pray for ourselves that we might also be women who are able to trust you whatever happens in our lives.

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Father thank you that you are the mighty and powerful God. Father thank you for the hope that you give us evenly in the face of death. Thank you for the confidence that Amanda has that. Father thank you for the hope that you give us that one day we will see you face to face. Father we thank you and praise you in the name of the Lord Jesus. We are going to finish now with a song and then it's time to go off to go over the river. Relaxation options and if you look at page 3 of your booklet to find a message about that. We are going to finish this song that is one of my favourite songs at the moment.

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It's a children's song so I struggle a little bit with doing it on conference and yet having heard Amanda in particular the verse that she chose from Joshua, I think it's a very God-given song. It does have actions but the actions are quite powerful. For the words go, be strong and courageous. The Lord of the ages holds all these little ones saved by His Son. Be strong and courageous. The Lord of the ages holds all His little ones saved by His Son. Be strong and courageous. The Lord of the ages holds all His little ones saved. And then there's an echo. I'm so asked in the main part and if you echo back. And because the song we were encouraging one another to be strong and courageous in the knowledge that God does hold His little ones, not only His little ones but His little ones saved by His Son.

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So let's sing it out as we sing this song together. [Music] [Music] [Music]

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[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

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