I shared in the last post about Steven and asked for prayers for his kidney transplant that happened yesterday. Again this is Travis’s cousin and her little boy. It is only by the grace of God that Steven and his mommy Penny both came through surgery with no complications. Penny’s kidney was very healthy and she is doing well. Please continue to pray for her strength to return quickly so she can spend as much time as possible with her little one who turns 3 today. Happy birthday Steven! He came out of surgery already off the ventilator and doing so very well. The Lord healed his bladder which the doctors thought was very small and would need to be stretched for the next two months to get to the size it needed to be. God performed a miracle, once again, yesterday and the doctor reported to the family that his bladder was completely normal and he was urinating a lot already. The Blohm’s have endured three plus years of hardship with Steven being born in kidney failure and the Lord has carried them through in a way only He could possibly do. I truly believe their years of plenty are coming and Steven is going to grow up to have an amazing testimony of God’s healing and provision for him and his family. It was such a great way to end the day knowing they were both doing well. I’m sure today will be difficult as post op day one is always so hard. Please continue to pray for rest, control over pain, no infection or other complications and for that beautiful, life saving kidney to thrive in Steven’s body. So many prayers have been answered and my heart is full of thanksgiving and awe at how amazing our God is and the way he answers prayers above and beyond anything we can comprehend.

After spending the day checking my phone a hundred times for updates, praying often and crying tears of joy when they both came out of surgery, I found myself sitting at the dinner table over blueberry pancakes and scrambled eggs with tears of pain flowing down my cheeks. And I said to Brad and Sidney who were there in the moment with me, “Why hasn’t God given us our miracle of healing for Ryan?” I didn’t expect to feel such searing pain at the end of the day. The emotions came out of nowhere and honestly surprised me. While celebrating for Steven, I found myself doubting God’s plan for us. And it was a very uncomfortable place to be. It’s so very easy to compare our own journey to that of someone walking along side us. And it’s not fair to anyone to do that. I had to really stop, pray and believe in the goodness of God that has brought us this far on a unique path all our own. God has not brought physical healing to Ryan because that’s not His plan for today. I once again had to go back to those eight comforting words God spoke to me in January 2005 when he so clearly said “He is as I intended him to be”. What power those words hold in my heart and mind. While I can easily fear for an unknown future, it takes an extra dose of strength and determination to remember to stay in the place of grace God has given me. There is a little place tucked in the corner of my heart that I have to continually remind myself to go back to. A place that involves all those promises tucked away in the depths of my mind that tell me my Father is faithful, He is good, He is glory and love and mercy. My story is my own and comparing it to someone else’s only diminishes the power of God’s work in my life. I am living the beautiful life God intended me to live. And in that story is a beautiful script of redemption and grace in the form of a little boy who captures the hearts of everyone around him. He is part of my story and the God I trust isn’t finished yet. He is working on me day by day and that means the emotions I feel are very real but they have to be from a place of trust and hope and joy. It’s in those moments I am able to relish the beauty of broken dreams, broken bodies and broken hearts. It is in that place where God meets me and says “well done my good and faithful child”. I am living a legacy of love. A legacy of hope and healing all my own. And while it’s so very easy to allow my mind to travel to that cliff of despair, comparison and unanswered prayers, I’ve found it even easier to stay in the grace that tells me God is good and He is working out His perfect plan for our family. Broken beauty is all about grace, it’s all about trusting the unknown future into a very known God, it’s all about believing in the good that comes from every situation and it’s definitely about giving God the glory for all He has done and will continue to do. It’s OK that I had a moment of pain as the tears wouldn’t stop yesterday because at the end of the day, I found myself back at the place of rest in the arms of the One who holds my every dream, the place of thankfulness for answered prayers for loved ones, the place of joy that in spite of circumstances I can’t change I can still find good, the place of healing and redemption for a messy life lived to the fullest. Broken beauty, it’s what I know.