Sometimes God gives us answers when we ask. Other times there seems to be a silence while we beg for a response. My answer apparently has come 4 years after the question when I wasn't even thinking of it. When we lost 3 babies over a short 4 month span in 2007 I wondered why. In my immaturity I concluded it was because God must be giving us a child that would be born quickly. Why else would he take them from us? As the months and years passed I was confused. We could have had both a baby we lost and another child in this time. It did not make sense to me.
My conclusions on the way to trusting God with the answer were not pretty. I told myself I was an awful mom and God wouldnt give me more kids because of that. I told myself clearly I couldnt take care of another if he would give me one. I plotted ways to end my life to be with the babies we had lost, then felt terrible for considering leaving the one we still had. And eventually I told myself God had a reason and he would share it with me one day on earth or in heaven. And I still did not understand.
I understand and it is so amazingly fantastic that the happy tears cant stop flowing in the middle of the night. We each have a purpose. So simple isnt it? And we know this. Even people who do not believe in God know this. But it is so much more than we think it is. Our three little ones concieved, planned and wanted in our love had a purpose and they each lived out that purpose fully. They were not a mistake God took back. They did not lack purpose. Their purpose was to create a wonderful testimony in us that would affect the lives of many. They are affecting your life as you read this. They made way for changes in our life. Their lives were the exact length of time that God planned them to be in order to complete what he wanted for them. Their purpose lives on every time we talk about them. And if somehow I had been able to keep them longer like I would have liked to at the time they left us, then our little girl Bethany would not be able to live out her purpose.
As Bethany kicks inside me, she has a purpose too. God has a plan for her that would likely not have come to be should our other children have been born. If we had not lost those babies, Andrew would likely be our last child. Bethany would not be here. Her purpose would not have been fullfulled. God saw the whole picture. God had a wonderful plan for this little girl. He knows the people she will affect every day of her life and he has a plan for her to infulence this world in a wonderful way. It is a plan that would not have come to be if I had my way 4 years ago. He knew better than me. His big picture is so much more than my little view of how I think things should be or how I want them to be.
Our life is so much more than our simple existance too. It is all worked together in a complex web including every person and situation that occurs here. I looked at the years we tried for Evalynn and thought that the only reason was so I could help someone else through it one day. It is so much more. Evalynn's purpose could not have been lived out if she was born sooner. There is some reason why she was born when she was. Hear me loud and clear everyone who has ever tried for a long time to have children, everyone who has lost babies - your child cannot live out God's plan for it in the best possible way if it is born in your timing. He has the perfect time for that child where it will influence classmates, teachers, coworkers, neighbours. If you picked their birthdate (which trust me I know it would be yesterday!) they could not live out their purpose properly. There is this massive plan for each of our lives and we could not put it together if we tried.
The years of waiting, the lost babies that were never held, the lost ones that were. They all have a purpose. There is a reason for the pain. It is not to save us from something bad but to give us something good. All of his plans for us are good. Our losses (as insignificant as it feels in light of some other's) were part of a good plan for us. Part of a good plan for you. Part of a good plan for Bethany and everyone she will meet that could not have happened without the things we thought were bad.
Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you
and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
Or in another version-" For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, said the LORD, thoughts of
peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end."
My babies lived out their purpose fully and reached an expected end that allowed for each of their siblings to live out their purpose too. Oh surprise ah ha moments are wonderful.
