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This is a guest post written by my mother who came to Montana all the way from Pennsylvania for a combined total of 12 weeks during the pregnancy and also after taking the twins home from the NICU.

As I tried to settle in for what could be a one or two hour wait in the hospital room, my attempted repose was interrupted by the animated voice of Dr. Cooper exclaiming, “Come on, Grandma. Grab your camera to take pictures as they go by!” Having expected a longer wait, I was a bit flustered and all butterfingers trying to find the camera. “They” were my daughter’s twins.

Chloe Joy and Nellie Paige were born prematurely one day shy of 33 weeks. For ten weeks we had lived with the reality that we could lose one or both of them due to various complications (for those details see Amanda’s pregnancy blog posts here). Forty-five minutes earlier the staff had wheeled Amanda into surgery for an imperative C-section due to preeclampsia with an unknown outcome for the twins’ health.

Rushing down the hall for my first peek of my granddaughters as they were hurried to the NICU, my emotions were indescribable. The flood of relief and joy that God had safely delivered them into our lives was overwhelming. It felt as though I was moving in a dream. They were alive and well. TWINS!

Chloe (top) and Nellie (bottom) just minutes after birth.

After seeing their profiles and heartbeats so often on ultrasound, this grandma was ready to meet and hold these little gems. But how does one articulate the wonder of holding a bitty two and a half pound person who was not yet meant to see the light of day? Her skin, so newly formed, still somewhat translucent and not grown into yet.

Her tiny fingers and toes, long like her mommy’s, so perfect. A head so tiny yet too big for her body, a wonderful thing we were told by the doctor because then she is growing a healthy brain. Such dark, alert eyes that search her new world curiously as she rests peacefully. A little bottom that is so young and thin it does not even have a crack! A perfect little mouth and tongue that entertain with all of their expressions. Such tiny ears laid tight against her head that you wonder if they will be large like her great-Nana’s. Chloe, the twin that was so much smaller than her sister Nellie yet more robust, breathing completely on her own by day two and regaining birth weight first. And Nellie, Chloe’s sister, looking so big beside her, yet only weighing about four pounds. There are not adequate words to describe this awe-inspiring miracle that I was given a front row seat to witness.

In the midst of all this wonder, one unthinkable thought kept pushing into the joy zone in my mind. I could not comprehend how so many tiny babies, just as helpless and precious as Chloe and Nellie, have been dismembered and discarded as worthless. My heart grieved. Amazing, how one heart can hold such joy and grief simultaneously.

As you read these reflections, my hope is that your heart is full of awe for God and His faithful works. This is not a story about a grandma or family with amazing faith. We are ordinary pilgrims on the journey of life. No, this is a tale of God’s amazing grace to fill our hearts with peace and faith through the long weeks of not knowing if we would ever meet Chloe and Nellie. We have no doubt that the peace that carried us was largely because of the relentless petitions many of you lifted up to God on our behalf. If you prayed for our family, you were an instrument in God’s hands to sustain our faith and safely deliver these precious lives into this world to fulfill a unique and special purpose in His kingdom. I am moved to tears when I hear of how fervently so many have labored in prayer for Chloe and Nellie and their mommy and daddy. I pray for a reward of blessing in your lives.

We will forever remember this time as a season of God at work in our hearts and lives to do what we could not do. After receiving a positive report at the frequent doctor visits, we could easily proclaim, “God is good!” The list is long of all the potential “bad” things that could have happened and didn’t. But with the help of God’s Spirit, we also wrestled through to a place of deciding to even proclaim His goodness if the outcome we were praying for did not happen. And so once again, I am humbled by His choice to bless with life, all because of His love and not because of our worth. We experienced the reality that in God’s kingdom the beauty of hard times is how God redeems them. Upon reflection, we are forever changed by being part of Chloe and Nellie’s story.

O magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His name together.”  Psalm 34:3