Miracles and Tragedy all in a day

My heart is torn. In a matter of hours of each other, I received news that made my heart leap in my chest for joy and some that caused my heart to ache as if it were being crushed. I awoke this morning and had an e-mail that said my good friend, Raquel, had her miracle twin girls this morning. Just days before, my other friend, Andrea, had her miracle baby, Jack, too! Raquel and Andrea had been trying to get pregnant for over 3 years. Last January, Raquel and her husband were blessed with support from friends and family to do IVF, which resulted in their blessed twin miracles. Both gals have incredible infertility journeys. The Lord blessed both of them through IVF, which is also very encouraging for us. IVF does allow many couples to receive their most desired miracles.

On the flip side, my mom called me today with some very sad news. My grandpa has been in and out of the hospital for the last month. Today, my parents were told that my grandpa has stage 4 cancer in his kidney and there are also some tumors on his brain. They will do radiation on his head to shrink the tumors, so that his quality of life can be improved, but there isn't a whole lot they can do about his kidney. It's so far advanced that doing chemo would only buy him another month or two at best. They have given him 6-10 months to live, optimistically.

If you are reading this, will you please pray for my grandpa? His name is Rollie. Pray for opportunities for friends and family to share the best news ever with him. Pray that his heart would be open to hearing the good news. God loves him and he can live with him for eternity in heaven. All he needs to do is ask for forgiveness. It sounds easy, but you sort of have to admit that you aren't good enough to get yourself to heaven. No one is. Not even Mother Theresa. We all need a Savior. It's tricky, because our culture is so inundated with earning everything. But, when it comes to eternal life, it's a free gift...you just have to accept it. God made it that simple, we are the ones that make it more difficult than it has to be.

I still struggle occasionally with trying to be good enough. Paul and I have both tried to earn a baby by being more "spiritual". Somehow, if we pray enough, read our Bibles everyday, and work up enough faith to believe in our miracle...THEN we will get pregnant, right? Wrong. Those things are all good, but they will not earn us a baby. What they will do, is give us strength and perseverance for our journey. It's like we're trying to twist God's arm into blessing us by doing enough good things. The reality is that when (if) the Lord blesses us with a child, it won't be because we did anything to earn it. It will be because the Lord is gracious and because HE is good. It really has nothing to do with us being good Christians. If it did, then we would be tempted to boast about what WE did to earn our baby. It's the same thing with salvation. If we could earn it, then we would boast about it and it would nullify what Christ did on the cross when he died for our sins. If that's the case, then Christ died in vain. That's why it has to be received as a gift. Someday, our baby will be one of the Lord's most precious gifts He has given to us because He is good and full of grace. The loose definition of grace is "receiving what you don't deserve." It's free, unmerited favor. That's exactly what it will be.