In the meantime

The announcement that they were expecting was adorable. The added twist in the announcement saying that they were expecting twins made it even more delightful, for it is not every day that the Facebook algorithm brings up a "we're expecting twins" announcement! I'm truly happy for the couple who is now awaiting the arrival of not one, but two precious little ones!  But along with the joy in my heart came a twinge of sadness: my heart couldn't help but think back to the time, four years ago now in March, when we were also expecting twins. The thrill of finding out we were expecting was only heightened by the discovery that there were two! For somewhere between 5 1/2 and 12 weeks, I carried our two little treasures, created in God's image and precious in His sight.  But then there was no more growth. There was no more life. The twins were no longer with us. God had taken them from us.  In these bittersweet moments of joy tarnished by sadness, Scrip...

Now that we have passed the “most risky” part of our pregnancy and are now over halfway there and without any signs of trouble, I often catch myself thinking, or even saying, that “God has been good.” Instantly, though, the thought comes to mind: Would He not be good if we had miscarried (or still do miscarry)? Would that change the fact that God is good?   Would I still be so quick to say that He has been good?”   Of course, we all agree that our circumstances don’t change the fact that God is good , and that He always will be good.  But our flesh is so much more hesitant to proclaim that He has been good when we go through pain-filled, life-changing circumstances. We tend to be so short-sighted and earthly-minded that even though we love God and have testified in the past that He is good , we usually gravitate towards declaring God to be good only when our  circumstances line up with what we would define as “good.”  And...

Since I'm on a posting spree here... here's the latest at the Stanleys!  We are incredibly excited, thankful, scared, and [lots of other emotions!] But super thankful that God, the Father of lights, Who only ever gives good gifts, has seen fit to give us this good gift. We love our precious Little One.

If you doubt whether such description should be given, take a look at the Gospel of Mark.  The very first chapter produces at least three accounts in which Christ exercises His power over physical illnesses. During His ministry, Christ healed countless people with infirmities ranging from leprosy, to fevers, to blindness and lameness.  It is in the story of Lazarus, where Christ raised him from the dead that we see a glimpse of why Christ many times healed those who were sick, or had already died: “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.” (John 11:4) Mark 2:1-12 declares the event of the crippled man with his friends who let him down through the roof of the house.  While this story is often told with the culmination of Christ telling the man to “Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house” (Mark 2:11), in reality, that is only a side-note.  The verse immediately preceding Christ’s comm...