Mamita y Papito

 As a young child (at around age 5 or 6), I distinctly remember crying myself to sleep at night a few times due to the fear of losing my parents.  Unlike most little kids I knew, my parents were very different…  It wasn’t that they were brown and all the rest of the parents were white, or that they didn’t drive the nicest cars.  It was that they were old(er).

Since I am the youngest of 9 children with my closest sibling being 6 years older than me, my parents (by default) were older in age when they had me.  Add to that the fact that I was an accident and it makes my folks even older.  (it’s true, my siblings told me so, and I did the math – who waits 6 years after their 8th child to have #9?)  So, as a kindergarten student, it was easy for me to tell the difference between my mom (age 48 at the time) and my dad (age 58 at the time) and the other children’s parents (all age 25 – 30).

That said, from a very early age I carried with me a fear in the back of my mind of loosing my parents sooner than I ought to.  I distinctly remember praying to God that he at least let me keep them until I graduated high school…  Apparently, I was perfectly in line with my mom’s prayers.  When I actually graduated high school she gave me a card where she detailed the her prayers when she first found out she was pregnant with me.  Knowing she was already a little bit old to be having more kids (age 43 at the time), she prayed to God to at least let her see me graduate.  

Of course, God Always Provides. 

After my high school graduation, I always felt as though I was living on borrowed time with my parents.  When I was 18, my mom was 61 and my dad was 71.  As such, I always made my best effort to take advantage of every moment I had with them, especially since I was moving 13 hours away to go to college.  And as grateful as I was to the Lord for answering both mine and my mother’s prayers, I went ahead and updated my prayer:  “God, maybe you can keep them around until I graduate college”…  Give a mouse a cookie and he’ll ask you for a glass of milk!

Needless to say, God is the great provider.  Not only did He allow my parents to see me graduate college, but they also saw me get married, get divorced, and get married again.

And then today, far beyond all realistic expectations, God allowed my mom (age 75) and dad (age 85) to meet my first daughter Alexis.  The picture speaks for itself.

I don’t write this as a final fulfillment of God’s provision, but more so as a testament to our tiny little prayers and His desire to give us an absolutely abundant life overflowing with blessings, and then some.  God has a plan for us, far bigger and greater than we could possibly imagine.  If only we can surrender to His will for our lives and trust Him in His sovereignty.

#SoBlessed  #GodAlwaysProvides