It is painful to share, but my wife Melanie had a miscarriage early Monday morning. She is physically doing alright and will have some minor surgery on Tuesday morning.

I was just observing yesterday with a friend how our family has gone through a roller coaster of emotions with the news that our son Mason is almost ready to come home from Guatemala in addition to recently finding out we’re pregnant.

Little did I know that this roller coaster was far from over as we processed this today…

I had just recently began to comprehend a little better that idea that we’d have three kids by February. As crazy as that sounded, I was so excited about it. Two kids in six months. That’s exciting. Who cares that we’d have to buy a home, find a minivan. This was worth it. Debt? Who cares. A child is such a bigger deal that worrying about that stuff….

We were talking the last few days about how we were “feeling” like it was a girl. We’d started talking about names. We even found some good ones. Now honestly this concept of having a little girl was crazy for me to process. I have two brothers and am pretty sure I would not know much of what to do with a girl. Recently though, we’d stayed with some friends who have two girls and I was strangely amazed with how much I was drawn to the idea. Just last week I found myself really hoping for a daughter who would call me daddy and think i could do no wrong…

But tonight. I sit here and can’t quite comprehend that this is not our immediate future. If the Lord wills, we still would like to have three children. We weren’t certain before about three children, but if the Lord will bless, we are more sure of this than ever…

So, the title of this post has the word “blessing” it it…I just added this. Why? Well, I have just sent out a prayer request to our church community (its weird to write a prayer request for yourself) and even at 11:15 at night I have already received back a number of beautiful and encouraging e-mails and a few phone calls. This morning, as I called a few close friends and family members, each of them showed so much grace and compassion towards us. Half the people stopped what they were doing and prayed for us over the phone. The out pouring of love from our family and our community has literally brought me to tears. It’s too bad my wife is sleeping…she’s never seen me cry… While sharing news like this is emotionally draining and not easy, we are blessed to walk down this road with such wonderful people. I cannot imagine if they were in our lives…

Earlier today I spoke with a close friend who had recently found out that there was a good chance his mom might have cancer. He informed me that today they learned that she doesn’t. What great news! Of course, I then informed him of our news. We realized that this is what Romans 12:15 is all about. “Rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn.” We need to do this even if we are the ones rejoicing and even if we are the one mourning.

Any time now i expect to receive a text message or phone call from our good friends from church who are about to have their first baby. Melanie and I, and the rest of our community, have an opportunity to live this verse out together as well. While our pain is very real, I can’t wait to go see Mark and Beth in the hospital and share in the joy of their new … little girl….

hmm…living Romans 12:15 won’t be so easy will it?