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| James & Laura enjoying a "drop" in the bucket |
Four
years ago Jim and I were in Gainesville transferring our two remaining
embryos. Right before transfer the embryologist told us the grade was
"just ok"- basically giving us little hope they would be successful.
Today James and Laura are thriving 3 year olds. God often works in ways
we can't understand and probably never will while here on Earth. I
won't ever know why we had to go to such great lengths to have our
children- or why we weren't able to have anymore- but our blessings are
so great with the two that we do have and for that we are forever
grateful.
In truth we aren't blessed, we are dang lucky. We are lucky that science worked in our favor and out of the 11 embryos we started with, the two we ended up with actually took and gave us James and Laura. We are lucky that through Jim's hard work he has been able to make a successful business that has allowed us to purchase tangible things to make our lives filled with items that make us happy and fulfilled. We are lucky that the hand of God has kept us covered and in good health- but we aren't blessed. As I write this I think of so many of my friends who are equally hard workers and of equal intelligence, but barely able to pay bills. I'm thinking of a childhood friend who is still fighting cancer- years after her first diagnosis. I'm thinking of several friends who walk a more Godly path than we tend to, yet struggled to conceive, and are still paying on loans for fertility treatments that resulted in only heartache, not a baby. As I type this I think of the 1000s of children in foster care, from parents who didn't even think twice about getting pregnant, who didn't pray for years to have them, who didn't sacrifice savings and credit ratings in order to bring them into this world yet here these children are.
Too often we associate worldly things with God's blessings. There is a pastor in a mega-church whom I refuse to listen to - because every sermon I've ever heard him preach is about how if we pray hard enough, if we do enough good things, if we are good people we will be blessed here on Earth with a reward from God. But, while I'm no Biblical scholar, I can't see how that is true. We can certainly pray to God for these things that our heart desires, but we can't believe that if we don't receive them God has chosen not to bless us. Our real blessing will be when we are with God - and while all the things in my life are amazing, and I thank God every day for them, they aren't a blessing. And to call these things on Earth that others yearn, work and pray for blessings seems like a slap in the face of those who haven't received. So please don't call my children blessings. They are amazing and I'm so thankful that God allowed me to have them, to raise them and hopefully point them in the right direction, but I'm not #blessed because of them. I'm blessed because I serve a risen Savior.
