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Take This Cup

 “Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

In preparation for Easter, this verse looms around in my head. Also in this season of so many unknowns, this verse aches in my heart. 

We found out I was pregnant a few weeks before Christmas after trying to get pregnant for 11.999 months (as Ike says.) We told family and close friends on Christmas and in the weeks after. Then at 11 weeks, during an ultrasound, we learned the baby had fluid on the back of his head/neck, called a cystic hygroma. This could mean a million different things - will it go away in the months following or will we have a child with a severe disability or will he reach full term? We did genetic testing. We waited. Two agonizing weeks of waiting to hear results. Which came back normal. And a BOY! One excitement among the muddied trench of unknowns in this journey. 

I almost hesitate to call it a "journey." That term has connotations of long suffering and in the world of baby making a "journey" normally means nothing went as usual and I just hate that. Our experience has been doctors appointments, dreaded doctors appointments, waiting in the exam room knowing something wasn't right but not knowing what it was yet, phone calls to get appointments and referrals worked out, the awkward moment over the phone when the nurse changes her tone once she opens my chart, hearing the health professional say one thing but then my medical friends and family question it (and back it up with research.) 

We have gone to one appointment at UVA with Maternal Fetal Medicine and with Pediatric Cardiology but we left with fewer answers than we entered with. We go back again in 4 more weeks. 

And all of that weighty unknown in the tension with hope. Holding in both hands the desire for a perfectly healthy normal pregnancy and yet being grateful for the gift the Lord has given us no matter the details or dashed expectations. The line "your will to be done, not mine" feels like a stab in the hand that reaches out for answers but does so in hope knowing that He is good and that He is in fact interceding for us (Romans 8:34). 

The feeling of acceptance in the pain yet hopeful he will take this cup away. Not because we don't want a child with a disability - we will love any child God places in our family. But because as a parent, you want your child to be healthy, to not be limited physically or mentally, and you'd do frankly whatever is needed to orchestrate that healing. 

So we sit in the in between space - the tension of asking for this cup to pass but also asking for his will to be done. Trusting, hoping, and (trying to be) grateful in the waiting. 

Also - no we don't have a name and even if we did, we won't tell anyone until he is born. Waiting is hard isn't it? :) 


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