Close to Heaven

While I waited for my follow-up appointment, I felt pretty good physically. I had initially been put off by coffee, the very symptom that had sent me speeding to the dollar store for pregnancy tests. For the coffee addict, a coffee aversion means one of two things: pregnancy or impending death by swazicki-zooloo virus. It bothered me that I felt I was gradually warming up to coffee again. I let a niggling doubt about the health of my pregnancy take root in the corner of my heart. I refused to water it, however. Overall, I have enjoyed a very blessed life. God has always had my back. When the chips have been down, He has ALWAYS come through for me. I have never lost someone I really loved, except my grandparents, and they lived long, healthy lives. I went to college on scholarships twice. I have a stable, dependable husband with whom I am still in love. We live in a nice home. Our children are handsome and healthy. I kept going back to this track-record of God's favor and to the fact that this baby was the very thing that my heart was yearning for, though I hadn't known it until I found out that he/she was coming. It had to be a part of a divine plan that would dovetail into healing and wholeness for my broken heart. I had suffered for so long from depression, disappointment and lonliness.  I knew that God cared, and that there is a scripture in the Old Testament which reads that he drew the wayward Israelites to him "with lovingkindness"...which always struck me as at odds with the harsh religiosity I have always shied away from. As I sat in my formal sitting room one afternoon, it struck me that my home, which had housed the pain of emotional brokenness for so many years, would now be the site of the kind of joy that is so far off of the charts, no one can contain or adequately record it.