What's our ultimate goal as parents?

 After our miscarriage, I decided to put together cards people had written, Bible verses that spoke to me, our ultrasound pictures and other thoughts in a notebook my mother-in-law gave me when it happened. I hope that maybe someday my children can learn from the lessons that I have been given through this experience, and I thought I'd share some of them on here too.

If you know anyone someday going through the same thing, please share these blogs. I'd love for someone else to find hope through what we've gone through, for God to redeem this situation and find glory if I can help someone else find him through the hardship.

---

I decided to listen to an audiobook about Jeannie Gaffigan --- a comedian's wife who had brain surgery to remove a pear-sized tumor --- because I knew I needed some perspective. It turned out that although they have five kids, she mentioned miscarriages and told the story of going into preterm labor at 22 weeks, after seeing a healthy baby girl on an ultrasound only a couple of weeks before.

They knew the baby couldn't survive at that age, and she only lived a few hours. Jeannie asked a nun to save her baby girl, and the nun said, "What is your ultimate goal as parents? Is it to get your children to heaven? Well, this one's already going."

I was driving when I hear that, and I called my husband, tears coming to our eyes, because that's our ultimate goal -- for our children to get to heaven and love Jesus. Well, we already have one baby there. I thank the Lord Jesus we will get to spend eternity with our child, even though we missed a few years here.

"Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and you right hand shall hold me. If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,' even the darkness is as light with you. For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them." (Psalm 139:7-16)

I prayed this over our baby. I was fearfully and wonderfully made, and so was this little one, in miniature, perfect form. I know God saw this baby, and he knew exactly how long it would be on this earth as a blessing to us. He wasn't surprised when our babe went to be with him.

Things looked dark here to us, but that darkness is light to him, because he lights it up and because he sees the victory that comes at the end when Jesus will finally come back and defeat evil once and for all. I am so thankful for our child and that he or she now makes his or her bed in heaven, where Jesus is. I absolutely cannot wait to meet him or her, give him or her a hug and tell him or her I love them. We will get to spend forever together.