God's Perfect Plan - Part 2

Click here to read Part 1.

But yet, these past months have been long and difficult. And, I know they are only the beginning of a long and difficult path that the Lord has called us to walk. I still grieve often for my son and the life he will never live. I often feel alone and feel that the road the Lord has called me to walk is too hard. Sometimes I just want to give up. But in those moments, God is always faithful to lift my eyes off of myself and point them back to him. When I am looking at him, all the cares of this world seem so small in comparison. When I am reminded that he will never leave me or forsake me, I no longer feel alone. When I am reminded that he will uphold me with his righteous right hand, the road no longer seems so hard to walk. And, when I am reminded that my God also had a Son who was despised and rejected by men, I know that the God to whom I cry out is intimately acquainted with my grief. And then I am comforted, for my God knows my grief because of his great love for me. While I did not choose this path, he did. And he chose to allow his son to suffer and be rejected so that I might be saved. And so that Wesley might be saved.

My prayer at the beginning of 2009 was that if someone were to ask me what I was most thankful for, I would be able to answer “the gospel”. While I would not have chosen for the Lord to answer my prayers in this way, I am grateful that he has graciously used this trial to fill my heart with thankfulness to him for giving his life for me and for saving me from my sin. He has filled me with a joy in the gospel that I did not have before Wesley was born. And I know that as I continue to walk down the road that he has laid before me, only he will be able to sustain me and give me the strength to go on. This gives me great joy, for I know that as I lean on him for strength and cling to his promises, my love for my Savior will only grow deeper with each passing year. So, while I would never choose for Wesley to have a chromosomal abnormality, I also know that this is the way that the Lord has chosen to sanctify our family, to work in us for our good, and to give himself great glory.

God's Perfect Plan - Part 1

It has been eleven months since the birth of our second son, Wesley David. These months have not been at all as we would have imagined them. When he was born, we were overjoyed that God had given us a healthy, beautiful boy. But, soon after he was born we began to suspect that things were not as they ought to be. He had a very weak suck, and after 3 weeks of trying to help him nurse, we had to give up and switch to bottles. Nursing was something that was very important to me, and I had to give it to the Lord, trusting that this was not part of his perfect plan for Wesley's life. Little did I know that this would just be the first of many times I would have to release my tight grasp of my dreams for Wesley's life and hand them to the Lord.

As well as struggling to eat and gain weight, Wesley also had difficulty breathing. After many doctor trips and visits to specialists, he was diagnosed with laryngomalacia, where the trachea is weak and falls down over the airway, blocking it and making it difficult to breathe. It seemed that every time we turned around, we identified new potential health problems and visited more specialists. When he was one month old, we decided it would be wise to put him through genetic testing to make sure everything was OK. What I was not prepared for was the phone call I received two weeks later from our doctor. When he informed me that Wesley had a rare chromosomal abnormality, the weight of it was overwhelming.

In that moment I began the fight for faith that I will continue to fight the rest of my life. The fight to trust that the Lord's plan for Wesley is perfect. The fight to believe that here, even in this, God is working for our good. He is working this for the good of Mike & I, he is working for the good of our family & our marriage, and he is even working this for Wesley's good. The Lord has been so kind to remind me again and again of the truth in Romans 8:32, which says “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” I continue to cling to this promise and the hope and peace it provides. Because God gave his own Son for me, providing for my greatest need, how can I not believe that he will provide for all of my other needs? How can I not believe that he will give me every good thing?

The Beginning

As Julie Andrews says, the beginning is a very good place to start. Unfortunately for me, it seems that the beginning of my entrance to the blogging world should have occurred 11 months ago, with the birth of my second son Wesley. So, I shall attempt to retrace my steps and recall all that has happened in this season before forging ahead and blogging about the present.

My desire for this blog is to share how the Lord is at work in our family, and more specifically how the Lord is using the birth of Wesley to conform us to His image and to bring great glory to Himself.