I Prayed for Miracles

I prayed two times this week.

In honest pleading, hope desire, I prayed. We prayed.

And yet still one couple said goodbye to a small babe in the womb; today another says goodbye to the son they held in their arms for just under an hour before he went to the arms of Love.

I prayed for miracles.

That these tiny lives would hang on and hold out and give to the world the gifts of their hands, their hearts, and their minds.

That two sets of loving parents would watch these babes grow.

That their feet would join the stampedes, more echoes would be added to the thundering in my hallways during get-togethers.

I prayed for miracles.

Two babes being rocked in the embrace of heaven.

I wonder if they’ve met the two small fruits of my womb in the midst of being held.

I don’t ponder it for long because peace washes over the tugging struggle in my heart of how I’ve prayed on my knees for miracles that seemingly never come, for an end to farewells that don’t want to be bid.

An eternity without goodbye.

An eternity I don’t yet realize, understand, but one two of my babies, their babies now know.

One He knows because He prayed for miracles, too.

“Father if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” Jesus offered in painstaking prayer* during the hour of his arrest before He traded His life for ours. 

He prayed for miracles, too.

And though it didn’t look like what He’d asked for, in mercy, in grace but laced with pain and grief, He got the miracle, He gave the miracle of death defeated in the permanence of eternity.

Thick hope grows quick, fresh, lush in my thawing end-of-winter heart.

I pray spring for those who mourn today, too.

I prayed for miracles.

These babies long-nestled in our hearts, pulling our souls Homebound, ingraining in us a longing for life without goodbye seeded in the soil of our soils, instilling in us more of a longing for more that miracle that came after the cross.

I prayed for miracles.

And I find them growing slyly wild in the revealed promise of the forever summer that is for them and is also yet to come to us through grace.