{"id":459,"date":"2012-05-24T16:10:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-24T16:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2012\/05\/the-way-god-planned-it.html"},"modified":"2014-08-22T15:48:35","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T20:48:35","slug":"the-way-god-planned-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2012\/05\/the-way-god-planned-it.html","title":{"rendered":"The Way God Planned It"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Once there were grandparents who longed for Catholic grandchildren.\u00a0 They had raised their own children in the Church, but they had fallen away and taken their children out of the Church with them. The grandparents went to Mass and prayed their rosaries faithfully and asked God to soften the hearts of those they loved, wouldn\u2019t He please give to them Catholic grandchildren?<\/p>\n

Across town, a mother held her new baby and prayed.\u00a0 She was falling in love with the faith in which she\u2019d been raised, but there were so few Catholic relatives left.\u00a0 Why couldn\u2019t God bring her family back to the Church?\u00a0 Why didn\u2019t they want the treasure she had discovered? Wouldn\u2019t God please find some way to give her children a Catholic family?<\/span><\/p>\n

One August Sunday morning, a baby cried in church.\u00a0 The grandmother peeked over her shoulder and grinned at the tiny boy with fluffy hair, his wriggling older brother, and their shyly peeking sister.\u00a0 Her eyes met the eyes of their mother, and her face softened into a grandmother\u2019s knowing smile.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It was not long before that fluffy head was resting in the grandmother\u2019s arms as she crooned to him a lullaby.\u00a0 The small girl soon found that the grandfather\u2019s lap was her favorite place to curl up and sit.\u00a0 The middle child discovered to his delight what it meant to have adoring grandparents living just on the other side of town.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

More babies came, as babies will, and the grandparents welcomed them all and enfolded them in their embrace, loving each one as their own .\u00a0 As the children grew, they knew that they were well loved by these grandparents who were their very own.\u00a0 <\/div>\n

It wasn\u2019t long before the mother and the grandmother knew that they were the answer to each other\u2019s prayers.<\/span> Both had begged God for a family to uphold them in faith and love them well, and each had found her own prayers answered\u2026\u2026not as she had thought she wanted, but in the perfection of God\u2019s plan.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The family we never knew we always wanted.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

*From our Oma: <\/span>\u201d Y<\/span>ou are so right. I never wanted anything except Grandchildren in the Church to share with them the beauty of our wonderful Faith. I never had thought that my Children would live life without the Church I so love. I still pray but I also revel in the beauty of Catholic Grandchildren that I can share my own story with and know they understand what I felt then and do now. Love you Oma\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once there were grandparents who longed for Catholic grandchildren.\u00a0 They had raised their own children in the Church, but they had fallen away and taken their children out of the Church with them. The grandparents went to Mass and prayed their rosaries faithfully and asked God to soften the hearts of those they loved, wouldn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Way God Planned It<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Once there were grandparents who longed for Catholic grandchildren.  They had raised their own children in the Church, but they had fallen away and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2012\/05\/the-way-god-planned-it.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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