Expecting with Hope

This is an excerpt from a book that my dear friend sent me.  She is friends with the author, and actually a featured story in the book.  I have been truly blessed by my reading thus far, and as I shed some tears of jealousy because another dear friend gets to take my beautiful babies to a gorgeous day at a fall festival while I rest, I picked up Expecting with Hope.  It is a book written to those who are pregnant after a loss.

I have read most pages curiously, waiting to find a nugget that I can take with me, and I have indeed found many of those nuggets.  What I didn't realize was that I was really searching for the answer the question most of us ask at sometime or another.  I still cannot verbalize the question, but I knew this paragraph was a comforting answer to me, and essential to my belief in the One I claim to put my trust.  Here are Teske Drakes words:

"...We have a God who lavishes His love upon us and who protects us in ways we can't begin to understand.  Sometimes, such love and protection may appear to be nothing more than absence, silence, or heartbreaking loss. In all actuality, every painstaking experience and every unanswered prayer are merely tiny pieces of a grander puzzle that He is piecing together in accord with His loving, merciful, sovereign plan for our lives..."

I cannot read that without crying.  Partly because I'm a little high on hormones right now, but mostly because I want so badly to bran that knowledge on my heart.  That HE LOVES ME. PERFECTLY. That unlike EVERYTHING I do for Benjamin and Violet... To give them the best shot at life.  To give them joy.  To help them be responsible people.  To protect them from harm.  To guide them and train them.  ALL of my efforts are just that.  Efforts.  But my Heavenly Father does EVERYTHING, allows everything, choreographs everything...to piece together his perfect plan for me.  And in that I must believe, or at my core I am unsure that I can truly believe.

And writing that down, was a big enough deal, that I've let my apple cider get cold, and my uterus feels yucky enough to not go and re-heat it.  Thats called sacrifice ladies (or gents, I guess?).  And thank you for letting God use you Mrs. Drake.  And Jessica.  And Paige for loving my littles.  :)