Blessed and Highly Favored

I was reading today in Luke about when Gabriel came to tell Mary that she would give birth to Jesus. Now, I am sure that when an angel of the Lord appears to you and tells you that you will give birth to the Son of God and Savior for all the only response you can really give is yes but I wonder if she looked back on her life and laughed at how little she knew of what she was getting herself into. While I am sure Jesus was the dream child for any mother - no time outs or temper tantrums - being His mother was with out a doubt an impossible burden for Mary. She had to raise, care for, and love a little boy that became the greatest man to walk this earth but all the while she had to watch as He was rejected, mocked, different, tortured, dismissed, beaten, spit on, laughed at, and ultimately killed. Now please let me be clear that I am in NO WAY comparing myself to Mary AT ALL, but as I read these verses I started thinking that she had the right attitude for sure in the beginning and I imagine she had to remind herself that alot as her role in life played out. Always repeating to herself "I am blessed and highly favored among women" and what a good mantra to have. While I can't fathom being Mary I do understand loving and caring for a sweet child that has a impossible burden to carry and I want to always maintain Mary's attitude about it. I do feel blessed and highly favored that God found our family worthy of such a burden with Riley & all she has to deal with and my prayer daily is that I would conduct myself as a woman who knows she is blessed and uses what God has given her to bring as much glory as possible back to Him.

Please keep Riley in your prayers - she is finally almost over her pneumonia and we are trying to make sure she stays as healthy as possible because she has a surgery coming up on May 18th. She is having her ear tubes replaced, another muscle biospy done for additional testing, and a stomach operation to help her be able to take food directly into her stomach via a g-tube rather than into her small intestine like she does now. It is a fairly complicated stomach surgery and she will have to stay in the intesive care unit for a few days afterward while she recovers. While surgery of any kind always makes us nervous & we hate that she has to deal with this, all of these procedures will really benefit Riley in the long run and we are trusting God with this just like everything else. Thanks for following our story and for loving and praying for our little Rileybugs.

Much Love,
Becca