On the morning of August 1^st, one week after Noah’s death and one day before our third anniversary, Jon and I did the Daily Bread Devotional, a daily devotional we have been doing since we got married. I wish I could say we did it every single day of our marriage, but I’d be lying. The truth is, more often than not, we were “too busy” in the morning to do the devotional so we skip it, and sometimes we would skip months at a time…

But there is something about going through the hardest time of your life that makes you have time for a devotional… It also helped that we were on vacation, completely relaxed by the pool.

We opened the app that day expecting something nice and encouraging like all of their other entries and found something we didn’t know we were looking for… God screamed at us, in the best way possible. The devotional entry is available online, if you’d like to read it.

If you don’t want to go read it, I’ll give you the CliffsNotes here:
The devotional opened with 2 Corinthians 4:7-18. From the apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth, in which he describes the pain and suffering he and the rest of believers are enduring as followers of Christ. Paul compares us to pottery jars that are holding an unspeakable, unseen treasure and he starts the section by saying,

“…to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed…”

He closes the section by saying: “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal…”

What a refreshing verse! All of this pain (and joy) we experience in the world is temporary. Everything, even the death of our firstborn son, is nothing in light of eternity… Our hope survives despite our brokenness.

Then the devotional spoke about how a project called “Nozomi” (hope in Japanese) was born during the aftermath of a tsunami that hit the region and took 19,000 lives and destroyed 230,000 homes. The project consists of jewelry made from the broken pieces of china found in the debris of the tragedy. Beauty in brokenness… “…struck down, but not destroyed…”

Of course I knew I had to get a piece of jewelry from this wonderful project. I visited their website, and their featured pieces of jewelry on the front page were these necklaces with a cross, and a small pendant with the word “hope”.

I bought three, very similar to those pictured above, as they are all unique pieces. I decided to get one for me, and one for each grandma. I decided to get all different pendants because each of us was going to have a different relationship with Noah.

A couple hours later, my mom called and in our conversation, she mentioned she wanted to get something matching with Rebecca (my mother in law) to represent their first grandbaby in common. I had to ruin the surprise and told her I already ordered something special.

I was anxiously waiting for the necklaces to arrive. Since they were coming from Japan, I expected a delay in shipping (amazon prime really ruins you when it comes to this). After three weeks passed, I was worried about them being stolen. I contacted their customer service to inquire about the status of the order. They responded within a day and informed me the package was returned marked as undeliverable. I realized I made a mistake in the spacing of the address when I entered it. They also informed me that the standard air mail option (which I chose) could take 2 to 6 weeks to arrive. They gave me the option to upgrade it to the express shipping option.

I replied back apologizing for entering the address wrong and expressed that, given the sentimental value of the jewelry, I would like to upgrade to the express shipping.

Without knowing the immense emotional value of their jewelry, they replied back saying “We sent your package again yesterday by express mail. Just consider that our gift to you! Thank you for being a great Nozomi customer!”

God used strangers in Japan to show kindness to me… to show His love for me.

I HAD to share my story. I wrote them back and told them how their project is touching lives around the world.

It would be funny if I said this post is sponsored by them (lol, I am NOT that kind of blogger) but it’s not…

If you would like to own a piece of BEAUTIFUL, high quality jewelry, and also help bring hope to families in Japan, you can! You can be part of this amazing project by purchasing an item on their website!