A time to reflect

At this point, all our boys are home! Wes and Charlie invaded on Sunday night and big brother Win joined them on Monday. We have a lot to share with you about the first two nights with babies at the Bunn house, but for now we feel it is important to reflect back on the events that surrounded their birth. For both of us, verbalizing/writing what happened as the complications from Ginger's c-section began to unfold is a big part of making sense of it all and processing the events within our worldview.

We spent the better part of 8 months worrying about all the things that might have happened to the boys if they were born extremely prematurely. But we never really spent any time thinking about what could happen to Ginger. And why would we? She was such a super star throughout the entire pregnancy (only one day of morning sickness, working past 30 weeks) that there was no reason to worry about her. Even the c-section itself was largely a textbook procedure.

We were not prepared when she started bleeding. And we certainly were not prepared for her to slip to a point where her blood pressure reached 60/40, two transfusions could not raise her red blood count and her kidneys were shutting down. Yet all these things happened. In the moment, we never really considered how close she came to needing an emergency hysterectomy or even to dying.

We cannot look back on that day and make sense of it without seeing it all through the lens of our faith in God. God never promised us that, if we were faithful, we would never encounter babies born prematurely or surgeries with severe complications. Rather, his promise to us through the Bible is that He is with us in the midst of whatever suffering we encounter, and that he will sustain us through it. We have to say that he did just that.

To everyone who has said, "I don't know how you made it through," we must answer that God, in His grace, gave us the strength to endure it without losing faith. And now, having seen the way God has sustained us in this instance, how can we doubt that He will sustain us through the myriad trials that will accompany raising these boys? We can count on God in the future, because He has proven faithful in the past. What a powerful reality - we see God acting in our lives exactly the way the Bible shows that He has acted since Genesis.

But, of course, we were never alone on that day. So many of you were with us. Those of you who prayed for us fully shared in this experience. We are so grateful that your prayers covered the surgeons who healed Ginger. We hope you see that, when we say that God sustained us, your prayers were answered, and on the basis of how God responded in this instance, you will have greater confidence the next time you turn to him in faith.

This is, of course, the way we interpret all that happened to us. One who has different presuppositions or a different worldview would certainly explain the day differently. But for us, seeing the unique experiences of our own lives fully echo all the things that the Bible tells us about who God is and how He acts is no coincidence. It is an affirmation that the needle of our compass is pointed in the right direction.