Reflection for January 8
There was no guidebook, but there was God. Jesus was with me in what felt like a storm of challenges and change. His love being perfect drove out any fear that lay ahead. I had married a loving man two years earlier, whose children had lost their birth mom, and he, his first wife, to ALS. I was now taking on not only being a wife and a mother to two children, but now becoming a mother to four children. We were expecting twins.
Maybe it was the necklace my mother gifted me that held the medal of St. Gerard, patron saint of expectant mothers, that I wore faithfully in hope of carrying those babies to term, that gave me strength. I knew it was God with me. Those babies would come to arrive at thirty-seven weeks exactly, and I would be forever thankful in prayer to St. Gerard.
Working full-time, gestational diabetes, high blood pressure, multiple medical appointments each week -- all were a perfect storm. Jesus was with me through it all. The unknown needs that were to come at their birth and the adjustments of navigating a family of four children -- in all of it, I was reassured that “perfect love drove out fear.”“Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid.” I knew it was a gift to be expanding my family. God had great plans for me, but more importantly, for them.
Dear Jesus, thank you for the gift of my faith life and time with my family: the memory of our visit to Cologne’s Cathedral in Germany this past summer and the prayerful moments of those two now ten-year-old boys before the relics of the Three Kings, both forever etched in my mind. May they now continue to grow in their faith lives and may they always feel that you are with them in all kinds of weather. May others come to feel that you, too, are with them always in the storms of their lives and in whatever may come in the new year. In your precious name, Amen.
Ginette Kempf