“I would say less than a week.” Replied the fetal consultant at the Royal London. This was in response to us questioning how long our little girl had left to live. Our dream pregnancy shattered. Our hearts broken. Grief like we had never known.

But… God is faithful. The sermon we listened to on Sunday hit the nail on the head. As God allowed this ‘thorn in the flesh’ (2 Corinthians 12:7-10) to enter our lives, the reality of a cursed childbearing process hit home.

We didn’t just pray three times for it to be taken away. We have prayed hundreds of times, and with everyone else praying possibly thousands. Whilst we have seen miraculous improvements in our daughter’s life and God has done far more than we could ever ask or imagine, the big thorn of the tumour is still there and we are still asking God to take it away.

Even bigger than this is the following statement in that passage, one which has been so precious to us. God says ‘my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness’.

Over the past weeks, we have had to cling on to God. To trust his will, to bathe in his miraculous peace and to have faith that he is sovereign. To long for the day when fetal cardiac tumours will be no more. When we will live in a perfect new heaven and earth. And we were encouraged that if God chose to take our little one, we will see her there too, in perfection. And in the weakness of our situation, so weak that even a dozen fetal doctors don’t really know what’s going on, we have seen God’s power shine.

If it wasn’t for our heavenly father, I’m not sure Bethan and I could have done this. So take heart; God can use the most brutal situation in our lives to bring us closer to him, trust in his sufficient grace and watch his power at work in this fragile world.