Monthly Archives: April 2012

Did you really want me?

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The words “unplanned pregnancy” are code for “out of wedlock,” which is what’s happening within my daughter Birgitta right now at 16 weeks pregnant. But “out of wedlock” babies aren’t the only ones that arrive “unplanned.”

Among my own 7 children several were unplanned pregnancies. Five, to be exact. Birgitta herself was unplanned, since I’d had a tubal ligation before she came. Although I eventually had a reversal, Nate and I didn’t know whether or not additional children would come. (Photo: Baby Birgitta)

What’s the difference between planned and unplanned pregnancies?

In reading Scripture we see that children are always considered a blessing, planned or otherwise. When God wanted to reward a woman for righteous living, the best gift he could think of was a baby. And when he was arranging salvation for all mankind, the idea he settled on was to send his Son… as a baby, by way of an unplanned pregnancy.

Babies are extremely important to God, a truth laced throughout the Bible. Caring for the children he sends, especially for their spiritual welfare, should be one of our highest priorities.

Nate and I used to attend a church whose pastor understood this. He spoke to his congregation on “Recruitment Sunday” (when every Sunday school class needed new volunteers) and said, “No adult should be sitting in a class for grown-ups if even one helper is still needed in the children’s department.” He agreed with God’s priorities. We’re to love, instruct, and nurture all children with equal care, since he has his own plans for every life, not just for those who were “planned” by their parents.

Last week a blog reader shared something extra special about our coming baby (on “Timing is everything”):

Hm-m-m,
Just thinkin’…
7 is the perfect number…
7th child having the 7th grandchild…

Thank you, reader, for that smile-worthy insight. Birgitta and I have both enjoyed it, and I know our little one will get a kick out of it someday, too. God was probably the one prompting you to write it so we’d all know how keenly he’s been involved in this “surprise” pregnancy.

My 7th grandchild may grow up to ask some tough questions that are difficult to answer, but comments like the one above will bring light-heartedness into what might have been a stressful conversation. Birgitta has already begun preparing for these questions by keeping a scrapbook of encouraging comments and messages sent our way. And if this child should ever ask, “Did you really want me, Mommy?” Birgitta will be ready with her “yes!” backed up by the “yeses” of many others.

And then she can give her child the best news of all by saying, “There’s also one who wanted you even more than all the rest of us, and it’s God himself.”

“Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.” (Ephesians 1:4)

 

Getting Through (all of) This

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How clearly I remember the moment this blog came to be. My daughter Linnea and I had always shared a love for writing, and she’d taken the lead by establishing a blog site in early 2009: www.KissYourMiracle.com

“Hey, Mom,” she said one day. “Why don’t you start a blog? Just put it out there to see what God will do with it.”

It seemed like an easy, solid idea, and since all of us have tough stuff to get through, www.GettingThroughThis.com seemed like a good name. Although I didn’t know it at the time, Nate’s cancer and death would be God’s first blogging assignment for me. Trudging through widowhood would be the second.

And now the Lord has identified the third, Birgitta’s unplanned pregnancy and baby. As the banner on this site says, we hope each post will leave you, the reader, and us, the writers, encouraged to keep moving forward, fortified to “get through” the days and nights of challenge coming to us and most likely to you, too.

Because Birgitta will be the subject of many upcoming posts, please know that whatever gets published on this site about her will have already met with her approval. And as she will be “getting through” one set of tests, I’ll be “getting through” another. Both of us sense God wants to use these posts in creative and constructive ways, and he’ll take care of that, as long as we entrust the words to his care.

Birgitta’s baby is still quite small, less than 4” in length. But as she said when she saw the ultrasound at 13 weeks, he or she is “…a complete mini-human.” Technology has allowed us to peek at what God is doing within her, and as she spread out her ultrasound pictures, just watching her delight in this tiny person brought delight to me.

Maybe that’s a mini-version of what happens when God sees us excited about the plans he unfolds in our lives. If we express joy over an assignment he gives us, does he then delight in watching us the way I did in watching Birgitta? If so, as we pace through these days of pregnancy appreciating the wonder of a tiny mini-human, we could say we’re part of a “chain of cheer:” Creator-to-baby-to-mother-to-grandma-to-heavenly-Father and hopefully back around again and again. I’m beginning to see that it’s our privilege to be involved.

And that’s my highest hope for this blog site that takes 90 seconds to read. May God’s presence in these few lines each day bring delight and good cheer to the whole bunch of us: Birgitta, you, me, her child, and mostly God, as he facilitates our “getting through it” all.

“Always be zealous for the fear of the Lord. There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off.” (Proverbs 23:17-18)

Messy Business

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While visiting Linnea and family in Florida, it’s been fun renewing relationships with 3 year old Skylar and 2 year old Micah. Little Autumn, 2 months this week, has changed significantly since I saw her last, which was her birth week.

Children are fantastic, but they can also cause lots of trouble. They’re labor-intensive, expensive, loud, and worst of all, they create endless messes. Autumn, for example,  spits-up on shoulders and makes deposits in her diapers. But those messes are small-potatoes compared to her older siblings. Skylar and Micah? They’re in the mess-making big leagues.

Those two can dismantle a room in just a few minutes of creative play. They can also “help” an adult with a 5 minute project that later requires 40 minutes of clean-up. Making messes comes easily. Cleaning up is more like combat.

And then there are us adults. Even the big-league messes preschool kids make are nothing compared to the disastrous ones we get ourselves into with people. They begin slowly and aren’t usually visible to others, but months or years down the road, everyone sees.

Children make messes with sticky fingerprints, but we do something far worse when we let relationships get sticky. And just as children hate to clean up the messes they make, we find it difficult to tidy up our relationships. Picking up the pieces and putting them back together is something we don’t usually want to do, but if we let disheveled relationships go too far, the clean-up becomes twice as hard.

God describes himself as our heavenly Father, our parent, someone who urges us to make things right just like we urge Skylar and Micah to put a messy room back in order. We insist the children get it done, just as our Father pressures us until we do what we know is the right thing.

Today Skylar, Micah and I made a morning project of reorganizing all their plastic bins, putting each plaything back in its proper place. We retrieved puzzle pieces from the garage and plastic people from the yard. Books had been tucked in the play kitchen and necklaces under the couch. The orderly result was children enjoying a sense of accomplishment and fresh enthusiasm for rediscovered toys.

If we keep our relationships in order, the same thing will be true for us… especially if the relationship we’re working on is the one we have with God.

“Now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.” (Romans 5:11)