Babies and Believing.

Sorry folks, some of you may want to say it was for you, but this past week was all for me. Sure, your child may have taken their first steps or you got the promotion you wanted or you finally got your bangs to look more like Kim Kardashian's and less like this guys:


Even still, this week was all mine.
I got a card from a dear friend. A friend who has seemingly accidently but very intentionally been placed in my life...via facebook. I know, thanks Zuckerberg. I read the card she took the time to write me and as quickly as I read it, my heart began a transformation.
{thank you Jill. your words were so much more than a pen meeting paper. and they brought more healing and hope into my heart than I could ever explain to you}
Then, I spent all week listening to a song that just wrecked me. I mean, every time I listened to it, I cried. Take a listen sometime, its called "Healing is in Your Hands"..cheesy title...amazing song.
All of that to say, this week...has been a week where my heart has started to view hope a little differently.
I am in no way a victim and in no way will ever play that role. But, these last three years have brought Scott and I more bad news than good...more heartache than joy...from losing our babies to sinking like crazy under a mound of medical debt...from unwanted job changes to unwanted partial home owners...from blood diseases to missing kidneys. It has been a road that has left us feeling bruised and broken and exhausted.
BUT. We both have confidently walked through each circumstance believing that God is good. And that we will be ok. Yes, it has sucked...beyond words, at times. Yes, we have both given in to vices at times...but, we always believed that God was good and that we would be ok.
See, my struggle has not been with accepting that bad things can happen in this broken world. My struggle is accepting that good things can happen in this broken world.
I have grown accustomed to saying that the story that God is writing for our lives is far more beautiful than the one we could ever write... but, the beauty has come through seeing His hope and grace through our pain. Not because the story itself is necessarily beautiful.
I say all of this to say. I want to meet this child that is moving and growing inside of me. I want to call him or her my son or daughter when I introduce them to people. I want to think about their future. I want to picture myself holding them the day they are born. I want to do the baby shower thing and the nursery thing and the molding my stomach in that strange paper mache cast thing.
But, I am scared to death to do that. I fall asleep at night and dream about having to deliver my child stillbirth and hold a funeral at our church and come home to an empty nursery. I take pictures of my growing belly wondering if this is the last picture I will be taking. I tell friends how excited I am and know in my heart that most of my words are to appease them and not me.
But, this week has been for me, my friends. Because I have been completely overwhelmed with the idea that God really and truly loves me. And He was the one who created me to be the little girl who walked around with dolls stuck up her shirt pretending to be pregnant AND a piggy bank full of quarters for her future children she would adopt. He was the one who created me to want to give birth to a child and rescue my child from another place on this earth. Both desires. He gave me the strong desire for both.
And so, even though they are words that are close to impossible for me to say. I am choosing to believe today that I will meet this child. on this side of eternity. Yes, Father, this child is yours before it is mine. But, today, I am not separating those two facts.
Because, today, I believe that this child is both yours and mine.