Is This Really a Gift?

I’ve mentioned how I don’t love waiting rooms. I feel like we been in a lot of “waiting rooms” in the past few months if you will. Maybe it’s just the waiting that I don’t enjoy. But that’s an entirely different post.

Today as I sat in the waiting room for my post-op appointment there were many women coming and going, some obviously full of life inside them and some I know were because the receptionist or nurse congratulated them excitedly. I have been prepared emotionally for a while for this surgery, for the reality that I would no longer have a womb, never again carry a child. But grief is a funny thing. It can sneak up on you and catch you at the craziest times. It was another reminder of what I have lost. No one congratulates the woman who has had a hysterectomy at the age of 33.

I don’t share this (again, some of you may be thinking) to gain pity. It’s just my life in process and it is what it is. God has not written my story like every one else’s and for that I’m thankful. Honestly I’m so thankful for what we’ve gone through because I can relate to others who have walked similar journeys and it led us to Isaac.

I’ve heard it said that God comes to you as your life. If God has orchestrated my life as it is and He loves me, which He does, then He wants to relate to me and meet me in it. I want to take my life as the gift that it is and embrace it, trusting God in the process.

I’m pretty sure that Mary didn’t expect her life to go as it did, But God entered in with a crazy plan. She was to carry the Savior of the world as an unmarried teenager. Great idea God. I’m sure that she didn’t get congratulated on that either. But Mary trusted God, took it as an honor and a gift to carry out His plan.  And she gave birth to Jesus, a baby; not exactly how people imagined their King would arrive on the scene to rescue them I’m sure.

Sometimes the gifts God gives do not come in tidy, pretty, fun, comfortable or expected packages. So I’m faced over and over again, will I open this (whatever “this” is) as a gift and trust God with it or walk away angry and miss out on what God has in store for me through it? I’m learning that I can still mourn the loss of things that I hoped for and trust God and the gift that He’s giving me.

So as we celebrate Christmas, the birth of Jesus, the best gift the world has ever been given I will try to also embrace the other “gifts” that God is allowing in my life, even if I didn’t ask for it to be sitting under my tree.