I Have a Baby and Another on the Way!

Surprise!  Ha ha, no, neither one is from me nor mine to keep, but I will be spoiling them for a few weeks. :)   It is a happy thing for me to cuddle the little twins, but a sad story overall.  From their mom’s perspective:

“My husband is not a good man.  He is does not try to provide for our family.  I worked very hard in the fields to save some money to feed the children and maybe send them to school.  I sewed the money under the mattress so he could not take it and spend it on himself.  He found it and went out and bought himself a second wife.  Now he lives with her and just comes here to make me have more children.”

My heart breaks for this woman.  How terrible to not be protected and loved by your husband! 

A couple friends and I went to visit these infant twins a couple weeks ago and it was so hard to leave them in the squalor in which we found them.  Their mom tries to take care of everything, but she can’t.  These new babies are kids #9 and #10.  You can’t feasibly provide for ten kids and watch them all at the same time – especially with as much attention as the little ones need!

 

The babies were covered in flies and had dirt in every little wrinkle of their tiny hands.  The mother obviously favored the healthier looking twin.  Maybe as a defense mechanism?  Only giving her affection to the one she thought would survive?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that she is a woman hurt and drained by difficulties of this fallen world.

The hospital I am working at was started by a couple ladies about 60 years ago.  One of them still works here, is in her 80s, and has a heart for taking care of babies in these kinds of situations.  She shelters and feeds and loves them for a few weeks or months and then gives them back healthy and happy to a grateful family.  She saw that the mother was favoring one twin, so she brought the favored baby to the hospital and will return next week for the other (thus hopefully giving the mom time to bond with her).

This favoritism reminds me to ask you to pray for relationships here at the hospital.  People have been incredibly welcoming to me and it seems like everyone is friendly to one another, but I know that relationships (especially between believers) are a key thing Satan attacks because, as Jesus said, “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” John 13:35.

In The Attributes of God, Arthur Pink talks about the well-known verse God is love. “It is not simply that God loves, but that He is Love itself. Love is not merely one of His attributes, but His very nature… The better we are acquainted with His love - its character, fullness, blessedness – the more will our hearts be drawn out in love to Him. His love is without limit.”

Love among Christ followers is a testimony to His name. We can only love because He first loved us (I John 4:19) and as we learn to love Him more every day, His love naturally overflows to those we come in contact with.  Pray that we here at the hospital would love each other limitlessly, speak the truth in love, and that our love for one another would be a witness to those who have yet to know our Saviour!

I pray for you, my friends, that you “may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God”  Ephesians 3:18-19.  Oh how filling is His love!

Oh the deep, deep love of Jesus
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free
Rolling as a mighty ocean
In its fullness over me
Underneath me, all around me
Is the current of Your love
Leading onward, leading homeward
To Your glorious rest above

Oh the deep, deep love of Jesus
Spread His praise from shore to shore
How He came to pay our ransom
Through the saving cross He bore
How He watches o’er His loved ones
Those He died to make His own
How for them He’s interceding
Pleading now before the throne

   - S. Trevor Francis