Delivery date set!!!

    As I sit here writing this I can't help but to cry at thought of the Lord's goodness to us. I am in awe. It has been almost 5 months since we found out that there was something going on with Sadie. There have been moments of not knowing whether or not I would deliver a living, breathing baby. There have been moments of thinking I was going to have to deliver really early and her chances would be slim. Yet here I sit at 36 weeks with a sweet little girl rolling around in my belly on this glorious morning! All along the Lord has beckoned us to trust Him, to let go of fears and anxiety and abandon our hearts and lives to Him in a way that we never knew we could. I have told every single doctor that I have seen that I do not expect them to be God. Though I love the medical staff we are working with and am so thankful for them, my hope has not been in their ability at anytime. In the midst of grim reports, our little girl is in the Hands of the Almighty. And the Almighty has carried us to this place. To sit in appointment after appointment, with specialist after specialist,  being told the worse case scenario, yet to walk in peace....true peace,  is so beyond human comprehension. Our God is Holy. He is set apart from anything or anyone. He is God and reigns over all the heavens and all the earth. Oh how I long to sing with the saints! How I long to sit at His throne and sing praises to His Name for all eternity! What a magnificent role the angels have... and we have to look forward to! Yet we, His people have the unbelievable blessing to be the canvas on which He displays His Glory. And for His own purposes, He has chosen this weak and broken vessel to do so. I look back on my life and how unlikely I was to be here, now.  I was in jail, on drugs, so lost. I was the one too far gone to be saved.  I was the chief of all sinners,  the girl that most church goers would see walking down the street and snub their nose at. In fact, they did. Yet the Lord did not. He in His Mighty Sovereignty spoke my name and called me forth from death and darkness into His marvelous Light. And here I sit surrounded by Him, filled with Him, clothed in Him. Oh God, How undone I am! How undeserving I am of His grace, yet how beautifully He has showered it upon me. He has lavished me, I swim in His mercy. That is why I can trust in Him. Oh, how can we not? If you have been saved, He has raised you from the dead, how can we not trust that He will carry us in the life? And yes, this life is hard, it is painful and it hurts. But we can walk in confidence, as His children that we have been called to a Hope. This life is not our own, we are not of this world.  What we see with our eyes, is not all that there is. There is a reality beyond what we can touch and it is the reality of Christ. We are called to walk in Him, not in just what we see around us. And through this journey with Sadie, the Lord is teaching me to do that in a deeper way. I can't tell you how grateful I am for this journey, not just for Sadie, but for every tear, every hard day, every bad report... Because through it all Christ is allowing me a closer look at His Face. Just as the poem, "The thorn" that I posted a few weeks a ago, he uses the thorn to pin aside the veil that hides His face. What greater thing can there be in this life than to know Him? I am so grateful.
      Yesterday Sean and I both cried tears of joy after the doctor left the room. In three weeks we are going to be delivering a full-term baby... something that had been thought couldn't be done. She is estimated to weigh 9lb 2oz. Obviously, it is just an estimate. The computers can't take into account the size of her kidney, but either way, she is a healthy size. We are confident in their decision to do a c-section. Though I would prefer to do things naturally, I did not have a peace about being induced. As soon as they decided yesterday to do a c-section, I felt a peace. I have never had any major surgery, but I trust in the Lord. The reason they decided to do the c-section is due to the size of her right kidney. It is so large and distorted at this point that it cannot really even be measured. However they do know that because of it, the size of her abdomen is larger than her head or shoulders, and larger than the width of my birth canal. To try and deliver would be dangerous for both of us. Her kidney could rupture, cause problems with her circulation or heart,  or a number of other things. I am dilated to 1 now. So for the next couple of weeks until delivery, they will monitor me closely to make sure that I do not dilate any further. If I do, they will move the c-section date up to avoid going into labor. I will be going to the doctor 3 times a week, to the specialists in Roanoke twice a week and my local OB once a week. I won't blog after every single appointment, but I will keep you updated as things progress and if anything changes. At this point we are planning on meeting our little Sadie on the morning of August 2 at UVA in Charlottesville.
        Please continue to pray that the Lord would be glorified through all of this and that He would give us the honor of being the fragrance of Christ to those we come in contact with. Pray that the Lord would keep me from dilating any further and that I would not go into labor before August 2. Pray as we begin to make plans for the care of Isaiah while we are 3 hours away for an unknown amount of time. And please begin to pray for the events that will occur after Sadie is born and the care that she will require. After she is born, we will enter a completely different battle... surgeries, tubes, IV's, and again... reports of the possible worst-case scenarios (which the doctors must give). Pray for me as her mother that I would endure, as I know I will not be able to nurse her and hold her right away, which is something I so deeply long to do.  Pray for Sean as the man and head of the family, as he must stand by, waiting and trusting in a very vulnerable way, not being able to fix or protect his wife or daughter.  Yet the Lord has not left Sean empty-handed.  He has given him the weapon of prayer in the midst of these battles, and the promises of His Word. We trust that the Lord will carry Sadie and carry us through the times to come. We walk by faith,  knowing that the birth, delivery, and all that is beyond is in His Hands... and we confidently rest there. Thank you so much for all your prayers and love. We can't wait to meet our sweet little girl!!!