Thursday, August 28, 2008

December 20, 2007

After the surgery and spending most of the day at the hospital, I spent the rest of the evening relaxing and sleeping. I was so grateful for the ladies at church who were providing meals, because Scott's sister, husband and son had come in town to spend Christmas with us.

That night I felt like I needed to read from my One Year Bible as I normally do, even if I only had time to read the Psalms. I knew I wanted to keep communication open with God--for Him to speak to me whatever--I was feeling His love, even though you would think in a time like this I would have felt rejected by God. Amazingly, I felt quite the opposite, so I wanted to read my Bible and hear more reassurance of His love for me, that He hadn't forgotten me.

I was struck with what I was reading. This is what it said from Psalm 139: “O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me. You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my every thought when far away. You chart the path ahead of me and tell me where to stop and rest. Every moment you know where I am. You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord. You both precede and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. . .You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—and how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your thoughts about me, O God! They are innumerable! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up in the morning, you are still with me!”

It is no coincidence that was the reading for Dec. 20. It was painful and amazing to read at the same time; I knew God was a loving God and that He was revealing to me at the beginning of the passage that He knows everything about my life, and additionally what happened to our baby wasn’t a “mistake.” We believe that God creates life, and although our baby had died, because something went wrong in the womb, He wanted me to know without a shadow of a doubt that it wasn't an accident (not to say He was being mean). From what I personally know about God, I can trust Him, and that He created this baby with this malformation for a reason (I’ll probably never know why); it wasn’t an accident but part of His sovereign plan at large. As the scripture states, this baby was knit together perfectly in my womb—it was being perfectly formed row by row and between November 19 and December 18, one of the rows had something purposefully out of place. Even God allowing me to carry this baby for so long and not losing it in the first trimester was planned. I do believe that it’s very clear God has a very active role in forming babies in the womb. If He had wanted this baby to live, it would have, no matter what the problems. And knowing that it wasn’t an accident and that He cares about me personally, makes it easier to trust that He has a greater plan with it—beyond even our own lives. I felt his reassurance that He knows every detail of our lives and that He was watching over me. I almost felt as if He was cradling me and my heart so much, because somewhere He knew that it happened for the greater good in some way--Scott and I wouldn't probably look back and say it was for our good, but knowing that God did have a purpose in all of this beyond us, and in return He was quietly reassuring me that He loved me and would take care of me. Especially after I returned home from the procedure--God had taken care of so many details to make things go as smooth as possible and I woke up without any pain--that's never happened to me before under anesthesia!

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