Unquenchable Love

Grace took on a whole new meaning when my daughter came into the picture. My wife and I had been trying to get pregnant for about two or three years. We experienced a miscarriage in early 2017. After taking some time to recover from the grief we felt from this experience, we started trying again. Even though we were trying to maintain faith in God’s plan, our patience thinned with each negative pregnancy test. Eventually, we decided to seek help from a fertility clinic. The fertility clinic provided my wife with preliminary treatment that needed to be completed before any decision would be made on whether or not we would move forward with assisted pregnancy, like in-vitro fertilization.

After completing the treatment, my wife and I decided to take a month off of any fertility treatment before making a decision that had so many physical, financial, and spiritual implications. As we prayerfully moved into this month, we began feeling more at peace about our fertility journey. Within a few days of starting our break from any sort of fertility treatment, my wife came to me with a positive pregnancy test. We quickly made an appointment with the doctor who was providing us with the fertility treatment, to have an ultrasound. The day of the ultrasound came and we were able to hear our daughter’s heartbeat for the first time. God does not always work as fast as we would like, but he is always on time!

We were able to get a clear glimpse of God’s Grace as we moved from relying on our will to God’s will, but the most profound glimpse of Grace we experienced came after our daughter was born. Our daughter experienced a life threatening complication during her birth and had to spend her first week in the NICU. Making matters worse, the NICU where she was born was full on the night of her birth, so she was moved to another hospital, while my wife had to stay behind and recover from her own traumatic experience from my daughter’s birth. As I went back and forth between hospitals, I observed the fragility of life as I saw my daughter with wires and tubes all over her body and also observed the unshakable sense of responsibility a mother feels to bond with her newborn child as I saw my wife ignoring her own recovery to go see our daughter. After my wife and daughter came home from the hospital, I continued to observe this fragility in my newborn daughter and the responsibility that my wife felt over the coming weeks.

As these weeks progressed, I reflected on how my birth mother must have felt after my brother was born. I was only 13 months old, and my brother was born with multiple life-altering health complications. Soon after my brother was born, my birth father was removed from the home and we would never see him again. Knowing how much time and focus our newborn requires from each of us, I can’t imagine how hard it was for my birth mother to be a single parent to my 13 month old self with my own individual needs, while taking care of a newborn who was already facing so much adversity and obstacles in his life.

Of course, my birth mother made mistakes and poor decisions along the way, but who doesn’t? What I have learned along my life journey is that we all make mistakes and poor decisions that keep us from having a better situation. I would even say that most, if not all, of us have made mistakes and poor decisions that could have been life altering, but we were in “the right place at the right time.” With this in mind, I am left to reflect on why some people face significantly more obstacles and adversity than others if we all make bad decisions and poor mistakes.

The only answer I can come up with is “Grace.” On this side of heaven, I will never fully understand why some people receive more Grace than others. What my understanding does tell me is that we are all living in the midst of a long line of past, present, and future that makes up God’s plan. We can only see a small fraction of where we fit into God’s plan. We can’t always see how God can use severe adversities and obstacles for His Purpose. All we can do is have faith, and find peace, in the fact that He will use our adversities and obstacles for His Purpose.

In conclusion, my understanding of Grace leads me to the belief that we are responsible for loving each PERSON around us, despite poor decisions, mistakes, and ACTIONS that we may not love. Grace is an unquenchable love for the person in the face of that person’s flaws. We all have flaws. Without Grace, there is no true love.