I clearly remember the day in the hospital when the doctor looked at my spouse and I and said how sorry he was. "There is nothing else we can do, your babies will be born today," he said.
In another time or place hearing those words - "Your babies will be born today" - would have been a great celebration. That day, the news was far from joyful.
Several hours before, the same doctor had informed us that the babies needed five additional days before being born to have a good fighting chance at living. Five days does not seem much, but that day it felt like an eternity. Carlos Juan and Juan Carlos were born and lived for several hours. In the midst of despair and pain, for a short period we were parents for the first time.
The scripture for today calls us to be thankful to the Lord. The Lord is good "and always merciful"; yet there are things I do not always understand and times in which I wonder how can we be thankful. The psalmist speaks to me in this scripture – it is for those things I do not always understand that I have learned to be thankful. Losing two babies is traumatic, but being able to experience God's love through your church community through that experience is not only a blessing, but also a miracle!
It is not always easy to look at ourselves, the challenges we faced and feel disappointed, hurt, lonely and sometimes even angry. Yet in the middle of those feelings, we are called to be thankful even for those things we do not understand.
In this period of Lent, all of us should take time to look at ourselves, look at those around us, and thank God for all the blessings we have been given, even those we might not understand.
