I can finally type without pain. Hallelujah!
My hands are still a little swollen and I’m not supposed to grasp and lift more than 5 lbs., but that restriction won’t keep me from sending a little bit of encouragement your way.
While quite remarkable and worthy of praise to Jehovah Rapha, my speedy recovery from trapeziectomy, ligament reconstruction and tendon interposition surgery in both hands is not the miracle I’m going to write about today.
If you’ve been a subscriber since early 2020, you may have read an email called, Ever wish you could be accepted just the way you are? In it, you’ll find this headline: “Nawna” Shawna will soon welcome another granddaughter. That precious little girl, born September 2020, is now big sister to another of my granddaughters, who was born exactly 9 months and 20 days later.
My daughter now has three girls under three. That’s the miracle!
Look at these precious miracles of creation.
Harley is on the left. She will be three years old exactly five days before Faelynn (above) celebrates her first birthday. Margot is pictured below, buckled into her carseat for the first time, as she heads home from the hospital to meet her two big sisters.
Middle-born Faelynn Rae (named to honor both my parents) arrived a few days before my mom’s birthday—the first one since Mom left earth for heaven the day after Christmas 2019.
My mom died right before the pandemic magnified my sense of loss. But then, Faelynn’s birth 9 months later ignited sparks of hope and joy. Celebrating new life in a season of sickness and death reminds me of Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 (NIV).
3 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance.
And now we’ve entered a new season with little Margot arriving nine months (and 20 days) after Faelynn, multiplying my joy—especially since the hospital discontinued the no-visitors policy in place when Faelynn was born.
I will never be able to recreate the missing picture in this sequence.
But that’s okay because that lost moment in the hospital with Faelynn doesn’t define our relationship. There is a time for everything, and many joyous times filled with photo ops await.
The seasons mentioned in Ecclesiastes 3:1 do not come at appointed times on the calendar like the four seasons. My winter may happen during your spring. Your fall might occur during my summer. Not only that, but the seasons of life do not come and go on schedule—give or take a few weeks based on the groundhog’s shadow. Fifteen days to slow the spread can stretch into fifteen months of lockdown. At the same time, new life can spring up through a thick blanket of chilling fog—like when Faelynn was born in the midst of a pandemic.
I’ve often heard it said that you’re either in the midst of a struggle, just coming out of a struggle, or headed for a struggle—there’s no other possibility. So let’s welcome the laughter and the tears knowing that God is with us in every season of life.
Seasons come and go. But God is constant and unchanging.
