Good morning…
“When a child is born, so is a grandmother,” wrote a longtime friend when our first grandson arrived. I was thinking about this statement when I opened the following email. A regular reader wrote these touching words after our blog Nothing Like A Newborn. She gave me her permission to share her story with you.
“Beautiful post and congratulations on Charlie,” she wrote. “I am so happy for you and your family!”
“Your message brought a flood of mixed emotions to me,” she continued. “My first grandson Noah was born and given up for adoption, so the birth was a loss to our family, a loss that sent me on a Christ-led journey through a lifetime of grief and from mourning to joy. My precocious daughter gave him the gift of life, showing a courage that I could not have exhibited at age 18. I have since had four grandsons who are the true joy of my heart, and I remember their sweet births as if it was yesterday.”
“And God is SO GOOD,” she explained. “This winter, around Noah’s fourteenth birthday I was given the gift of meeting him. He has a wonderful family and they love him very much! He had questions about his lineage so my daughter and I met with Noah and his family for a short time. It was a 14 year prayer ANSWERED, and my grandma heart is now at peace, knowing that he is fine.”
“Births are messy and beautiful,” she concluded. “So is the life that God has given us. Enjoy the JOY. And special prayers for you to keep writing, you are ministering to so many people!”
When a child is born, so is a grandmother, and, this reader is right, “Births are messy and beautiful.” Life, itself, is also messy and beautiful, flooded with mixed emotions. At some point along the way, birth leads to loss and loss invites us on a Christ-led journey, a journey through grief and mourning to joy.
“Enjoy the JOY,” this grandmother recommends, because loss, grief, and mourning are also an unavoidable part of a life well lived. Somehow, some way, in God’s perfect time, prayers are ANSWERED and our grandma heart is filled with the slow-growing fruit of peace.
Throughout our lifetime, we all experience the messy and the beautiful. But the wisdom from above is pure first of all; it is also peaceful, gentle, and friendly; it is full of compassion and produces a harvest of good deeds; it is free from prejudice and hypocrisy. And goodness is the harvest that is produced from the seeds the peacemakers plant in peace (James 3:17-18, GNT).
…Sue…
