With one hand she wiped away tears that escaped her light blue eyes. The other hand was placed under her life-filled belly. She spoke to me with a soft and gentle voice, "I'm nineteen weeks along and they won't stop calling me. I turn thirty-seven this year. My doctor says I'm at high risk of having a baby with a disability ." As she spoke, my heart began to beat faster. The same heart that has been broken and healed. Graciously healed. A heart that has been refashioned.

The word unknown flashed in my mind like a neon sign. There was a time when I thought I had control of the unknown, like I could keep it from happening. But today it has become the sweetest part of my life.

I listened to her worries, the kind that every mother struggles through. The more children we have, the more worries rise to the surface of our hearts.

I held my daughter close and I poured out words that have come from the most difficult times in my life. Times that have become precious to me. It was when I was desperate for Christ to be my comforter. When no human could possibly offer me any comfort, my Savior was reminding me to trust in Him. Not my plans and my direction. But His perfect plan. His good and perfect plan, one that I would have never picked for myself.

As I told my friend I would pray for her, she's been on my mind ever since. And that test has been on my mind. It can tell her a few things about her baby, but it will never tell her all the things God knows about her baby—after all, He is her baby's creator. The one who formed her beating heart. The one who knows every soft and delicate hair on her precious head.

A Perfect Plan {facing the unknown in pregnancy}

No matter what, God is so good and so faithful to bring beauty out of the darkness. That dark corner of our mind that consumes us with the what if's and I could never. The place we want to hold on tight to everything we love. It's a place that we feel in control. And as light shines into that hidden place, we can know freedom from worry and fear.