To be humbled...

I have read and reread and prayed and cried today. I think so much about what Ginny and Matt are going through today with the loss of Eliot. I'm reminded of the first 48 hours with Ella and how close we were to losing our little girl. Even those first couple of weeks when we waited every day to hear how the infection was progressing, or receding as it was, I have never been so scared and brought to my knees. I look back through pictures of these past, almost 6 months, and I'm amazed and even more grateful. How small do our problems look now? I'm so thankful that my baby will wake up tomorrow...that she will smile at me...that she will give a huge laugh to her father...maybe her eyes are a little lazy and maybe she can't hold her head up, but I can hold her...there was a day I thought that would never happen. I learned this through my sister today as she had to say "goodbye" to her husband. My brother-in-law, Michael, left for Iraq today...and I have a husband who gets to come home tonight and give me kiss and a hug...Sara won't have that for at least a year...God will remind us what to be thankful for, even when we don't want to listen. As I was doing my bible study tonight I reread a verse that I already had underlined, but I think it takes on new meaning now.

2 Corinthians 7-10
"To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake,I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

I am learning that through the hard times I learn more than a I do when it's easy. I know that I have been taught a huge lesson with Ella on God's goodness, but now I have to apply those lessons on a daily basis...easier said than done. We live in an imperfect world, but in heaven that will all change. Eliot is there, without cords, or vents, or feeding tubes and he's laughing and singing and dancing. I hope that we can all learn to be humbled with where God has us, because He still has us here.