Our story

On the way to our early morning ultrasound today, Sam was singing "I see the moon, the moon sees me, God bless the moon and God bless me." It wasn't that early, and I'm not sure why he had that song on his mind. After a few rounds he stopped singing and asked in that sweet voice of his, "Mom, does Jesus always bless us?" After looking at Joel like, "Where do they come up with this stuff?" I answered, "Well, the Bible says that every good thing comes from the Lord..." and Sam followed that with "and blessings are good things." "Yes they are Sammy." ( Don't judge if you have a more theologically sound answer. It was early. He is a newly four year old that can't wait until I get all of my thoughts together:)

I must have had that on my heart, though, because as the ultrasound began and I heard the first "Well, the spleen looks good" or something of that nature, I prayed, " Lord, I give you thanks for every good thing that we hear about this babe. Please give me grace to deal anything we hear that may be not good news. " I went into the ultrasound a bit fearful. Or mindful I guess of all that can not go "normally" with a pregnancy.

Though we found out that our baby GIRL (a big surprise to all but Amelia, who knew it was a girl from the beginning:) looks great so far as does the positioning of the placenta for a VBAC , etc. , I know that for many these mid-point ultrasounds are not so joyous as they find out really tough news. Gosh, I know many, many, many don't even have the chance to get an ultrasound because of infertility, etc. I know. Deep in my gut I know. I have felt the pain of infertility, I have dealt with the fear of having very sick babies.

Hard stuff comes. Life shaking moments. I guess I'm just saying that eventually I want Sam to know that though I believe with all of my heart that God loves to fill our life with blessings and good things, this is a broken world. There is pain. There are surprises that seem like they could never turn out happy. But God is there too. He would have been with us in that ultrasound room if the news had been devastating today. He would have been there to comfort our breaking hearts, to start His work of making beauty from ashes. It is in both the beautiful moments and the despairing ones that we can see His hand prints in our lives.

So, there you go Sammy. I hope you see in your mama's and daddy's life that we trust and love and believe God when it seems as though the blessings are pouring from the sky, but also when it seems there are no bright spots to be found.

For tonight, Joel and I are giving thanks for the beautiful moment of seeing our baby girl, sitting and watching with her wide eyed brother and sister and her Mammy as she wiggled around on the screen in front of us. Amazing. Spectacular really. I don't want to take that for granted for a moment. Thank you for the reminder Sam, to be thankful for every good thing in our life (especially a good God who is with us all of the time.)

All for now, Jen