Annabelle Hope

Beloved:

      Annabelle Hope was born on Saturday.  She came seven weeks early and fifteen weeks later than doctors predicted.  She’ll soon be home came to live with her mama, daddy, sister, two brothers, three grandmas, one grandpa, aunts, uncles and cousins too - instead of the heavenly saints, with whom doctors predicted she would dwell.   

     No offense to doctors and saints but we are thrilled to have her.  She weighs five whole pounds and has lots of silky black hair.  Her fingers are thin and light as worsted weight yarn, with perfect little fingernails.  She breathes, eats, sleeps, burps, and cries properly.  Doctors have given her a detailed To-Do list that must be completed in order to go home.  She’s clicked off quite a few her first three days, impressing us with her focus and self-discipline.  

     She’s a eating, breathing, burping miracle we can see and touch; proof to those who believe that God is not far off, absent or uninvolved.  We prayed and prayed.  We believe God acted, got in the way of the usual science.  Why for us?  Why for Annabelle?  Why not for others who prayed and prayed?   I don’t want to pretend to know.   I only know that joy and heartbreak are neighbors, in the same town, sometimes in the same family and right now, into our has come a five pound bundle of gigantic joy that no amount of heartbreak shall overshadow - and we could not be more profoundly, humbly, happily grateful!  ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette