Posted on 03/06/2011 12:14:25 PM PST by MintyHippo1980
A few days ago, when I decided to introduce my family members day by day, it didn't occur to me that Grace's turn would come up on March 4th...which happens to be her 14th birthday! She has spent the day in the manner of all Bennetts: She got to set the day's menu, pick a fun activity, and have part of her day interrupted by a sibling's unscheduled trip to the doctor.
And because she is (help me!) 14, her idea of a fun activity was to go shopping! A perfectly suitable way to spend the afternoon of one's birthday, in my humble opinion...especially when several gift-giving family members know your plans for the day and give you piles of cold, hard cash in advance of your shopping trip! I'm all about it...except for the fact that, right now, I can't go! Remember?
Ah...such is the stuff of dreams! But if we don't tap the brakes and look in the rear-view mirror from time to time, it's too easy to forget how we got here! And we can't have that, can we?
(Cue the flashback music!)
Sweet Jimmy B and I hadn't been married for all that long when we decided we ought to continue our family. I mean...it wasn't like we were going to get a few nice, quiet years of just being a couple! And it seemed pretty obvious to us that we should make a trip to the delivery room together. After all, we have a good time wherever we go! So, no problem...we'd both had babies before; we'd conjure one up together!
Only it wasn't quite that easy.
I guess, in the back of my mind, I figured I would find myself pregnant immediately. When that didn't happen, it wasn't really such a big deal for the first few months. But then time marched on. I charted my cycles; I took my basal body temperature; I read book after book about overcoming infertility. By the time we hit the year-mark, I was having bona-fide hysterical freak-out fits every month and refusing to hold other people's babies. These were not my finest days, friends. Finally, we went to the doctor...and ultimately (obviously) we found ourselves pregnant with Grace.
But see...now I've gone and done that thing where I allow objects in the rear-view mirror to start getting a little hazy in the distance. Sure, now I have a zany 14 year old (sigh) and her six younger siblings as evidence that I would indeed have more children than the three I started my marriage with...but back then, the anguish of not knowing how that would all work out was really (embarrassingly) crippling.
At the time, I know that I could never have articulated how the Holy Spirit ministered to me during that season, because although God had been drawing me closer and closer to Him through my early 20's, I was really only just beginning to understand anything at all about the Christian life. As such, my journey through infertility was truly my first experience with agonizing over something in prayer. I had prayed for plenty of things, but my struggle to get pregnant--my struggle to come to terms with the fact that my timetable and God's just weren't matching up--was the first time something had ever overwhelmed my prayer life. Sadly, I lacked the spiritual maturity to truly rest in the Lord during those long months...to trust that He is sovereign and that He knows what He's doing. But He taught me gently--though in a way I never would have chosen for myself--that He really loves me and that He is truly concerned about the big and small matters of my life. And He tried to show me that His grace is sufficient for me. I sure didn't get that then. It's still a hard one to get my arms around.
It's sort of funny to look back on that time when I knew so little about what it means to be in relationship with God (even less than I know now!), because it seems like so many things should have been obvious to me...but I just couldn't see them! For instance, no one had ever pointed out to me how God seems to delight in putting people into our way who have survived the very thing with which we are currently struggling. He sent me some beautiful Christian women who had walked the road of infertility before me and who were absolutely faithful in weeping with me and, eventually, rejoicing with me (Romans 12:15). And I totally get that now. Some trials are so painful and so huge that they seem to want to overwhelm us. Even when the trial is over, it's so easy to be tempted toward bitterness, simply because the pain had been so great.
But it's like I've said before...for those of us who are Believers, we have the chance to go through something really awful and have a wonderful ministry opportunity to show for it. I really do feel terrible for the people who have to plod through the suffering, only to have painful memories to show for it.
So over the years, that dreadful season of infertility has given me the opportunity to reach out to so many women who are desperate to have someone walk through it with them who already knows the way.
One such walk I have been making for far too long is with my daughter Krystal. Only I think someone needs to come walk me through walking with her, because watching her go through it is far worse than having been through it myself. And she's been fighting it twice as long! But she's doing it with so much more faith than I had. (Remember...lots smarter than me.)
But back to Grace! Why did you go hopping down that trail? Get back here!
Grace was born March 4th, 1997...exactly one week after our third wedding anniversary. And we rejoiced!
And then, when she was only a few hours old, the nurse came in to tell us there was a problem. Grace was breathing too fast because her body wasn't getting enough oxygen. We couldn't hold her because she had to stay in the nursery under the oxygen hood. But the doctor assured us that babies sometimes just do this...and that she would probably work it out on her own.
In response, Grace popped a fever.
And when she was 24 hours old, her doctor came in and told us that she would like to send Grace to a hospital with a NICU. I felt like I had been punched. To that point, I had never in my life known a horror like I felt in that moment.
Because Grace had been born by c-section, I couldn't (or at least shouldn't) go be with her until my doctor released me the next day...so Jim and my mom left to make the drive, and I was left to watch the team from the NICU arrive and get my baby daughter ready for a ride in a helicopter.
They let me be in the nursery as they were getting her ready, and they were so kind to me. And when one of the nurses picked up on the fact that I hadn't gotten to hold Grace other than just a few minutes in the delivery room, she insisted that I hold her before they took her.
Her insistence was like being punched all over again, because to me it insinuated that she thought this might be my one chance to hold my baby. But as I held baby Grace, I was just flooded with peace. It wasn't that I had a surreal sense that everything was going to be OK; I simply became overwhelmingly calm. And when I had to give my baby girl back to the nurse, in my mind I made the conscious decision that what I was really doing was handing her to Jesus.
That was a long, long night. Before the NICU team left, they had given me a phone number that I could call any time to see how Grace was doing...and I called a LOT! And every time I woke up, I found that I was singing the chorus to "Grace Greater Than Our Sin." You know the one: Grace, grace...God's grace...
Now, I know that song is about the doctrine of grace and Christ's redemption...but that night, I believe the Holy Spirit used that chorus to remind me Who loves my daughter more than I do...and into Whose care I had placed her. That was a night I would never want to go through again...but a night with the Lord I wouldn't trade for the world!
A week later, we left the hospital with a perfectly healthy baby!
And fourteen years later, God is still using her to teach me all sorts of things about fear...and patience...
And fashion sense:
Grace is now in 8th grade, which means that we've touched all the the bases in homeschooling (since we started when Krystal was in 8th grade, see?). Whew! It's no wonder I'm plumb tuckered out! And with the end of Grace's birthday, she was tuckered out too. It's hard work spending other people's money!
Blessings! Missy
Don't you see that children are God's best gift? the fruit of the womb his generous legacy? Like a warrior's fistful of arrows are the children of a vigorous youth. Oh, how blessed are you parents, with your quivers full of children! Your enemies don't stand a chance against you; you'll sweep them right off your doorstep.
Psalm 127:3-5
Marvelous piece.
Thanks for posting.
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