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Surprised by Love

For more than a year before Makiah died, I would wake up near dawn most mornings and sense that God wanted to spend time with me.  This was a big deal for me because I would feel wide awake, heart beating, and I am NOT a morning person by any stretch.  I thought of it as "the love call."  I would sit on the back porch drinking my steamy mocha and reading "Jesus Calling" while pink and orange waves of sunlight peeked over the horizon.  Surrounded only by chirping birds and a silence that envelopes the soul with peace, I would sip and meditate on scriptures.  Occasionally, I would whisper a prayer, but mostly those morning minutes were just about "being" with the One who woke me up with the love call.  Maybe you have heard it, too...

I think now that the call was so clear because those mornings were building in me something vital to my survival.  I was on the verge of plunging into the deep darkness that is the shadow of death and the shredding of hearts and dreams.  But I was clueless.  He was not.

So many reached out to us in the darkness to tell us that God loves us still.  Even so, that very question has been the great wrestling of my soul these last 17 months.  I know in my mind that there is no greater love than dying for someone else, and He did that for me.  So if He never did another thing for me, that is really enough.  But the tentacles of pain have squeezed my heart so tightly that it has seemed numb and icey to me.  Barely beating and incapable of feeling much deeply beyond hurt or anger or fear.  And so my breath prayer (you know, the kind you whisper quickly in desperate moments) these last months has been that God would give me a heart revelation of His love for me again... not just head knowledge.  Well, I got a surprise.

Have you ever been really, truly surprised?  I have had a few surprise birthday parties, and of course Makiah's death was a terrible, shocking surprise.  But now I can say without a doubt that I have had the best surprise of my life so far.  Cameron and I met with the fertility specialist in January to make plans to start the process again this summer.  I had a secret, crazy desire to be pregnant now so I was inwardly disappointed to hear that we had to redo some testing and that would take some months.  A few weeks later I took a routine pregnancy test so I could start the new meds the good doctor had prescribed, and well, you can imagine how shocked I was when it was positive!!  Of course I ran to the store and bought the most expensive tests they had... the ones with the words "pregnant" or "not pregnant" because I was shaking too badly to figure out silly lines!  Three positive tests later, I knew it was true!

I had been surprised by love!  A little bundle that is now 11 weeks along and will be born in September!  After all those years of infertility and interventions and tests that tell me that this is medically impossible...  here we are!  Pregnant by surprise!  And I know in my heart that this is a love gift from the only One who could give this sort of present.  And I feel it is no accident that our new little one will be in our arms just a week before Makiah's second heaven day.  Another gift of comfort for this mommy and daddy on the anniversary of our emptiness.  And something  has come alive in me these last few weeks.  Maybe it is the inward knowing in my heart's secret chambers that once again I cannot deny He loves me still...


PS  We have had an ultrasound and it is just ONE beautiful, little baby with a perfect heartbeat! :)

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