3 Gifts Ugly Beautiful

1. For years, I have struggled with infertility. Days, and weeks, and months and YEARS of wondering if my deepest heart's desire would come true. I cannot say I always handled it with grace - many many many moments of ugly...sadness and despair I can't even now explain adequately...the grief and longing for children I wasn't sure would ever exist...the loss felt so deeply for someone who wasn't even there to begin with...and hoping with such deep agony that God would please just listen to my heart, listen to my begging and fill my belly with a child so I could be a Mama....it is a beautiful, beautiful gift, being a mother.  I am so incredibly grateful to God that He redeemed my broken heart and gave me His grace to go through such heart-wrenching years of longing...and gave me these two little boys to love and mother. My most beautiful gift. 
2. The scar from an unplanned surgery to bring my 9.3 pound baby into this world...the extra 'lovins' around my mid-section...the stretch marks and saggy boobs...not so pretty...but great reminders of the answers to prayer for the two babies that God has graciously seen fit to be my sons.
3. The stress and craziness and 'busy' that is involved in being a family 'in the ministry'...the toll it takes on the wife left to basically mother 5 children on her own while the Dad/Pastor looks after the many, many needs of others so he doesn't disappoint anyone and their great expectations and find himself out of a job to support said wife and children...the shielding as best they can, their children, from the woes and worries of living beneath reasonable financial security, hurt and pain inflicted on them by others...the only-now-realized imaginable strain on a marriage that doesn't allow for much 'quality time' due to the needs of the congregation and needs of the varying ages of children in their care....the letting go in the worst possible timing of finally diagnosed disease, left to worry for future finances and health...made beautiful for time finally had to spend together....a marriage made beautiful in difficult times, times to finally be real and vulnerable before their now-grown children, time to laugh together, time to just 'be' who they are and not always who everyone thought they ought to be...walking through life together...needing each other...seeing God's grace real...a family close, and witness of God's goodness in heart-ache...He has taken some broken-ness and sadness and hurt and betrayal and made us a passionate group of people who can perhaps bring out the worst in each other at times...but if you dare cross us...you better know there are plenty of us, and we have each others' backs. I do so love my dear little family.