Every Good and Perfect Gift
As some of you may know last year, at the end of January, Lana and I had a miscarriage. We lost our first child and the grief was unbearable. It was a very deep loss for us. But later that June we found out that we were once again pregnant. What a gift from God after such a deep loss. Yet the joy and excitement that we experienced with our first pregnancy was not quite the same; we were anxious and we desperately did not want to lose our new gift. So, we began to pray probably more fervently then we ever had before.
Every day when we thought about our new baby, our new gift. We would pray very specifically that our baby would continue to grow perfectly healthy in every way - that she would be perfectly healthy physically, perfectly healthy mentally, perfectly healthy emotionally, and perfectly healthy spiritually. We prayed this all the time, and God continued to reassure us that this gift was still with us. In the beginning, it was through terrible morning sickness, because well... if you are still throwing up, you're still pregnant! Before long our growing gift began to move and move and move - the girl was never still! Then the hiccups also set in! Each time she moved or hiccuped it was a little blessing that we would thank God for. We continued to pray that she would be perfectly healthy physically, perfectly healthy mentally, perfectly healthy emotionally, and perfectly healthy spiritually.
Finally the day came and our gift from God, our perfect gift of joy, was born and in our arms. Just as another reassurance that God was taking care of us and our gift, the whole birthing team from our midwife to the assistant midwife to the two midwife students continually used the word “perfect” while they examined and checked out our baby girl. She was perfect in every way, just as we had asked God so desperately for. One midwife even said she was better than a text book baby - she was perfect.
As I write this and watch our baby girl nap with her mama, I can see how much God is a good, good Father. One that when asking for a fish does not give a snake in return, but instead gives you exactly what you need more than you can ever imagine. I never would have imagined when praying for “perfectly healthy physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually” that God would in fact answer those prayers with this perfect little gift of joy, our Thea Joy.
“Every good and perfect gift is from above…”
James 1:17