It was the winter of 2013, we were in transition, moving from one country to another with YWAM when we found out I was pregnant. Not wanting our first born to be delivered in a foreign nation we opted to spend 6 months in Canada to have our bundle of joy. We were graciously given free room and board by a YWAM base in Alberta, in exchange we served in their kitchen and office.
The big day finally arrived and it was everything we were not expecting. Everything that could go wrong seemed to be going wrong, and it flipped our world upside down. Not that becoming a parent for the first time isn't a big enough challenge on it's own, now we had all these other challenges that we had not anticipated.
I had major complications and my husband who had never even held a baby was thrust into being our newborns primary caregiver, as well as my own. It took us months to figure out how to do the new us. Not only having to adjust to lack of sleep from a newborn, but learning how to get out of bed, shower, dressed, not being able to drive, combatting feelings of feeling like a failing mother, etc. In the midst of all of this we completely stopped serving the YWAM community that had so generously taken us in.
Instead they served us.
The love this YWAM community showed us in our hardest life moment awed me. They shifted schedules, furniture, delivered dinner, cheese and fruit platters, held a baby shower, babysat. You name it this community did it for us. Not once did they ever mention work, or the lack there of.
This community showed me what it meant to have grace for another. To show someone they didn't really know that well unmerited favour. The goodness they showed to our family was beyond measure.
By all rights they could have asked my husband to return to work, or at the very least started charging us for room and board.
But they didn't.
Instead, they chose to throw their arms around us and love on us in any way they could for the few months we were there.
Those months, they changed my life.
