We all love to hear the story of the perfect baby boy who changed everything. But today I feel compelled to tell you about another baby boy. It’s not a different story really, but part of the same story. I never met him, but he changed my life. Here’s part of his story, in the words of his parents, my friends Bill and Anna.

Bill writes: “After two miscarriages, Anna and I were delighted to learn she was pregnant…not with one baby but two! Soon afterward, ultrasounds revealed a troubling prognosis. Samuel had a severe condition that prevented his face, skull, and brain from fully developing. He was expected to survive only momentarily after birth.

Months of crushing doubts, fear, anger, sadness, and pain followed. Many of our friends helped us put our hope in God. Anna and I prayed over the boys every night, calling on the Lord to heal Samuel and provide a safe delivery for both boys. In the face of no evidence, friends and family continued to pray and fast for Samuel, Jonathan, and the two of us.

Our boys were born a month early. Samuel was small, weighing around two pounds. He was not healed.

At this point I could have become bereft and angry.

But God gave me the grace to take Samuel into my arms and love him.
To tell him he is accepted.
To call him my son.
I’m glad he got to know those things.

I am confident in the One who now holds Samuel.”

Anna writes: “My heart is grieved to lose Samuel.  My arms ache to hold him again, and see who he will grow to be.

Through all the months of praying and waiting on God, I know He could have healed Samuel. I don’t know why He didn’t. But I do know we WILL get to see and hold Samuel again in heaven – and our family will finally be all together.

Bill rocked Samuel in his arms, smiled at him, and told him how much he was loved by us and by Jesus. We are caught between grief and joy. We have decided to trust God.”

Nothing could have prepared me for what happened when I saw these pictures at Samuel’s memorial service. Because I saw myself. I was the one with a fatal flaw.  I was the one disfigured beyond all hope.

Seeing the way Bill held Samuel, I understood how I looked when the Father took me in His arms. He embraced me tenderly and called me His when I was still fatally, impossibly damaged.

Samuel didn’t have the capacity to survive outside of Anna’s womb, and I can’t survive apart from God’s sustaining power in my life. I am dependent on Him for my very breath.

But Samuel taught me another lesson. It’s one we easily miss because we can’t see it in real time. God didn’t leave Samuel damaged, and He doesn’t leave us damaged either. He embraces us as we are, but doesn’t leave us that way. Everything that remains in God’s presence is made completely whole. Samuel is in God’s presence now, whole.

We’re all held in this embrace, caught between grief and joy. Your grief looks different from Bill’s and Anna’s and mine. Your fatal flaw may not be as evident as Samuel’s, but it’s there. We can limp through life, sustained but damaged. Or we can choose to settle in to that embrace, and be made whole in God’s presence.

Whose story is compelling you to choose wholeness? Whose story is pointing you to the bigger story God is writing?