shiloh grace (part two):

BEFORE READING. SCROLL DOWN FOR PART ONE

Wait? What? Down Syndrome? In a moment life was changed forever…again. As we listened to the midwife and nurse speak, our hearts sank. The world froze. It was in a moment when it felt as if all the peace we had quickly turned to uncertainty. The midwife and nurse left us to process. Right before we were getting ready to pack up and head out. Now here we are. Still. Anxious. Unsure. Confused.

Seconds being left alone, we began to weep. We will never forget that moment for the rest of our lives. We will never forget holding our daughter in our arms and embracing each other as our tears found their way to our newborn girl who is to now face a life of down syndrome. It’s in those opportunities of life you realize what is inside of a human. You realize what they truly love. What they truly believe. Who they really are. Where they find hope. It was almost as if we had lost the very life God just gave us. Everything was drastically different. Our hearts, broken and confused, began to bless the Lord. We knew nowhere to go but Him. We could only run to Him as our refuge. The compassionate One. The one who created our tears. The one who sovereignly anticipated comforting the very tears we were crying since creation. The one who creates and sustains all of life. He is our Hope. He is our Rock.

Fortunately, God was so merciful to have immediate family in town from the second Shiloh was born. As I walked to the waiting room, with the heavy news in my heart, I asked my family to come back to the room so we could share something. It was in that split second I caught eyes with my mom. I knew she knew. Tears were inevitable as we all hugged and cried our way back to Maria and Shiloh. Grieving what we knew was lost and yet somehow weeping tears of joy, knowing God had such a great purpose in it all. God’s grace had never been so evident in our lives before. Through the confusion and pain we declared His goodness and walked in truth.

Now we want to share our hearts after two weeks of processing. crying. laughing. praying. worshipping. We realize without clearly communicating our hearts we are not serving you well and empowering some of our closest friends and family to both love us and even more, to love God. We have been learning so much from the Father. We are in awe of His kindness. Our hearts of full of hope as we reflect on the beauty of Jesus. Our lives are so rich with the nearness of Holy Spirit. We would never want anything to be different. It’s amazing to have the grace to already start seeing God’s purposes in our family.

What we ask of anyone who reads our story is to examine your own heart. What we ask is for you to not have pity on Shiloh or us. What we ask is for you to have pity on yourself. We live in a society that exalts physical appearance and intellectualism. We live in a society that finds its hope in vain ideas of success and acceptance. We ask as you read our story and the many chapters to follow, that you would know God more. That you would repent of your sins. That you would come to know what love is. what the Kingdom is all about. How God feels about you simply for who you are and nothing you’ve done or could do. That you would realize true beauty is found in the Most High. We pray you would not look at Shiloh as the one diseased, but yourself. Oh God have mercy on us that it would take a disabled human or the next dying cancer patient for us to groan for Your coming! For you to return and make all the wrong things right. As if we are okay and clean. As if we are not sick and don’t need healing. So we yearn for the hope we have at the resurrection. Not for Shiloh’s sake. But for our own. For we are all in need of healing and wholeness. Jesus’ promise to return and restore is all we have. Shiloh just gets to join in on the groan we’ve all been missing.

Shiloh is not hear to learn. She’s here to teach. She’s here to show us what the Kingdom of God is about. She’s here to teach us the Father’s heart and His joy for His people. Whether Shiloh grows to live on her own, graduate college and work a full-time job. Or whether she is never able to accomplish anything our society finds identity in. Whether she out lives us or we out live her. We rejoice! We rejoice in the life God has sustained and given to the world. We rejoice in the fact none of us are promise life and the life we have is a vapor. We rejoice that our hope is secure in the one who gives life eternal. We rejoice that He uses the foolish things to shame the wise. We rejoice that God cares more about us loving Him and bringing him glory than our own comforts. God teach us to love. Teach us to love what matters and to repent of the idolatry we’ve deceived ourselves into believing and finding false hope in.

We hope you are challenged as we have been. We hope you rejoice as we rejoice in the precious gift Shiloh is. We hope you love in a deeper way as the Father deeply loves us. We pray you will bless God for his goodness and leadership. We pray you will walk in more compassion for what our society says is a waste and to tune your hearts to what God says is worth living for. This is our family! This is our ministry! These are the days we’ve been longing for!

Romans 11:36 – For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

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