A Healthy Baby Boy

It's a boy! A healthy, screaming, adorable little boy. We had boy #3. Only this time, there weren't any complications and he was completely healthy! We named him Anthony.



This is what every mom hopes for. For me, it was a miracle! I didn't know if there was even a possibility for that ever, after David passed away.

I hadn't been sure , I ever wanted to take the chance  again. Now, I was so happy we had another baby.



Anthony was a very easy going,  content baby. His older brother loved playing with him.  Thinking back on it, the two boys didn't keep me very busy. Jamie  liked things cleaned up,  Anthony was always happy.  There was lots of time for play and I loved it.



I wanted to teach my boys about God.  I wanted to teach them "just right".

I tried to keep a lot of traditions, that I had been brought up with.  For me that was another attempt at pleasing God and people, too.

If I stuck with the church, wore a head covering, wore the right clothes, make sure I don't work on Sundays, (so on went the list) maybe things would all work out. Maybe rally bad things wouldn't happen anymore.

Even though I knew Jesus died for our sins and I had accepted him at a young age- I still thought- I need to keep working for my salvation. I thought I would lose my salvation every time I failed him or anyone. So, I had to please God and people.

Secretly, I  thought, losing our babies was the hell he had created for me because, I had not met up to the expectation God had for me. Words I had been told when I was a little girl were still haunting me. I was told I would go to hell if I wasn't good enough.

Now, he gave us this healthy boy, I didn't feel I deserved! I needed to do whatever I could to keep them.

Fear had a grip on me.

Would I ever be able to keep it all together and live out the expectations I felt were on me?

Would I find a way to please God enough and keep the people around me happy?

Would God allow me to keep these boys if I didn't find met the "standards" I had been taught?

Did the fact that I accepted Christ all those years ago still count for today?

(To read a full version of my faith journey, go HERE .)

 

 

 

Saved by Grace

All of us are born sinful. People might do good things but we are not born good….because to be good would mean to be perfect, never breaking God’s commands, always doing God’s will.

We need to acknowledge that we have all sinned. Then we can cry out to God for mercy and forgiveness and repentance. God has paid the price of sin through Jesus who died on the cross for our sins. If we believe in Jesus, confess our sins and turn from it, He will forgive us.

The bible says to seek God and search for Him with your whole heart. If we do this and ask Him to fill us with the holy Spirit, He will and that gives us a new life. This is what it means to be born again. There is no other gift as great as the gift of the holy Spirit! We then will want the things of God. We will love God and He will become the most important thing.

This does not mean now you will be perfect. This just means that God will teach you and show you day by day what he wants or does not want you to do. It will not make life easy, and there will still be temptations and mistakes. So we just have to continually pray and ask for His guidance.

When a baby is born they need time to grow and learn . It does not happen all at once. The same thing when we are born again, we will grow each day, and become more like Jesus. God will show us bit by bit. Only God is able to do all this in our lives.  It is not the things we do that make us Christian, it is faith. We can not make ourselves Christians no matter how hard we try. By faith though, HE will bring us to Himself and we will want to live the way God wants us to and the things we are doing will often show that we are Christians.

God will make us a light in the dark because of what he has done in our lives.

©Nancy Wall