**Post found on Sufficient Grace ministries Facebook page**

Our beautiful friend, OB nurse, and mother, Mary Young, shared these powerful words at her church on this Sanctity of Life Sunday:
On June 22nd, 6 years ago, Jason and I went to our routine 20 week sonogram with our third baby. It was at this fateful appointment that we first heard the words: Incompatible with life. And over the next couple of days, as we confirmed our daughter’s diagnosis with multiple specialists, we had to grapple with what that phrase really meant.
Without hope.
Broken beyond repair.
Miserably flawed.
Destined for death.
Only two options were ever really offered to us. Continue the pregnancy and cross your fingers for the chance that you might have mere minutes with your child, or terminate the pregnancy.
When Jason and I think about those first couple of days after the diagnosis, neither of us can even remember discussing the options. Terminating the pregnancy was never even on the table. Now, I can guarantee you that for me, this was not at all a spiritual or religious decision. I think coworkers, friends, even some family watching from the outside would tell you that we must have come to this conclusion because we were deeply religious and because our religion tells us that abortion is wrong. But I think the reason we could never even utter the words “termination” to each other is only because we loved our daughter. We had longed for her and anticipated her life in our family and we could no more purposefully end her life than we could our two other living children. We wanted nothing more than to know her. And if the circumstances dictated we might only know her for minutes or hours, we wanted all the time we could get. We were just thinking like parents. It was our job to protect our children. And quite selfishly, we weren’t willing to jeopardize the one thing that was being taken from us: time with her.
And God was so gracious as to give us three days to love on our daughter. Three days to memorize her face and smell. Three days to hold her, sing to her, to introduce her to her family, and to make sure that she knew that no matter her flaws, she was deeply loved.
And in exchange for those three days Adelle gave us many, many things. She taught us to long for Heaven. She taught us that the impact of someone’s life is not measured in the length of their days. And she taught us that love and sorrow are more closely connected than we ever thought possible.
But one of the clearest pictures that God gave us in Adelle was a small glimpse into His sacrificial love for us. Because I too am Incompatible with the Life. I am without hope. Broken beyond repair. Miserably flawed, and destined for death. And my Father, in His overwhelming love, didn’t once consider giving up hope on me, either. He never thought to abandon me in my lowly, broken state. But he moved towards me (the flawed and broken one that no one thought was worth saving) and gave me what I most desperately needed: LIFE. Just because he loved me and longed to be with me.
And so my precious daughter and her short, sweet life is the perfect reminder for me that God’s definition of a life worth saving is completely different than mine. And for that, I will be eternally grateful.

Please note: At SGM we serve many families who make difficult choices about their dearly loved and much – wanted babies. This story is from the heart of one sweet mama sharing her family’s journey. I love how she points out that we’re all incompatible with life, and in need of the saving grace of Jesus. And I love the way Adelle’s life is a picture of that grace. ♡
‪#‎perinatalhospice‬ ‪#‎everylifematters‬