If He Can Do That, He Can Do This...

Happy Good Friday y'all!  This weekend is usually my favorite time of year.  This year my Facebook newsfeed was blown up with hymn lyrics and Bible verses that speak to the beauty of this day in the Christian faith.  For today marks the fulfillment of our faith in God.  He manifested Himself as a human, walked this earth free from sin and blame, died a gruesome death to atone for all the sin that had already been committed and all that would be committed in the future.  And on the 3rd day HE ROSE!  He conquered death...there is no more to conquer!

So today that fact gives me glorious hope!  That if He can conquer death.  If He can rise above the grave.  If He was willing to sacrifice Himself to save our souls.  Hallelujah, I have everything to hope for in this life and the next!

I had a short chat with Elise the other day and I told her, in response to my last blog post, that I really do believe that no matter what the outcome of our IVF, God will be glorified.  His power will be manifested in praise and thanksgiving, or through my own weakness in failure.  Either way He will be the center...

But she said, "Rachel, I just don't feel like failure is what He's setting up here.  I mean, I can't see the future or anything, but I just don't see it ending that way."

I'm trying not to sell myself out here y'all.  Years of failure in this keep me from really doing the "name and claim" thing.  I know God well enough by now to know that no matter what, what He has planned is better.  Even if His outcome in this is still no baby Womacks on the horizon...

I'm with Elise, though.  In my heart of hearts, I have a hard time seeing Him ending this in failure.  But He's not really giving me more than I should know at this point because He's requiring faith from me right now.  He's requiring patience.  He's requiring that last mile from me...

I *know* that something is about to give here.  Something is going to change.  We are close to *something*.  My head and heart hope unwaveringly that that "something" is a baby...

 I am reminded of a hike that I took with Jonathan, Patrick, and Nicole nearly 2 years ago.  Jonathan talked all of us into hiking Mt. Royal in Colorado and we all fairly blindly followed because he said it wouldn't be that hard.  It kicked my friggin' butt man!  Probably 10 times on the way up and on the way down I thought about quitting.  Just parking it right there on the trail and pouting about how little oxygen I had, how tired my legs were, how many times I had literally fallen on my butt in the process of this hike.  Now looking back, I can see where perseverance simply had to win out.  Tenacity and unwillingness to accept defeat were things that had to exist in order for me not to STILL be sitting on that trail to this day pouting...

But it's not the summit that is the parallel for me in this.  It is the climb (<----insert kitschy Miley Cyrus reference here...).  It is pressing on when you have no idea what's ahead of you.  Is it another straight up cliff?  Is it a beautiful view?  Will I fall once again and have to dust myself off and keep going?  Will this all be worth it in the end?  Will I be laid up in bed unable to move the next day wishing I'd never taken on the challenge?

The Bible says that "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen."(Heb. 11:1).  What that tells me is that my inability to abandon faith in this endeavor means that there is something more to the story.  It won't end in failure.  It won't end in defeat.  Would God have told Joshua to march around Jericho and do all those crazy things if He really intended for the army to yell at the wall and nothing happen??

I can't believe that He would call me to such boldness in my faith just for this all to end in failure.  This thing is bigger than us at this point.  So the reminder that I have today about God's boldness in loving us...His laying down His own life to save ours...centers me.  It reminds me that no matter what, God is in control.  And He will never leave me or forsake me.  Even thousands of years ago on this day when they took His body from the cross and put it in the tomb.  When the Mary's wept over His passing.  When His disciples hid because they thought it was all over and they were next.  When the whole world thought it was over...

He was working on something marvelous.  Spectacular victory which demanded all He had.  And if He can do that, He can do this...