Hold on to this.

Rewind to 21 weeks pregnant and I was at work one day cleaning my room before seating my next patient and one of my co-workers introduced me to her patient she was about to seat and told me that he and his wife had twins early last year.  This was not an unusual occurrence as once I shared that we were having twins, it seemed like there are twins everywhere!  I can't even remember how many patients I met at work who either had twins or were a twin or had twin grandchildren.  And when it comes to twins, the general rule is, most likely they are going to come a little early.  And if not, the doctor wasn't going to let me go past 38 weeks anyway.  But of course, being pregnant with twins and preparing myself that they probably would come 2-4 weeks early, I had to ask, "how early were they?"

I wasn't prepared for his answer.  Twenty four weeks.  As in 16 weeks early???  Yep, that's right.  I'm pretty sure my jaw hit the floor.  That was only 3 weeks away and I was no where near ready for two babies to enter this world in just a few weeks.  I had cribs, and car seats, but that was literally all.  I had no where to put the cribs because our baby room was still a guest room.  Naturally I asked if they were okay and he told me that they were now.  Thank God!  That was the end of our 1 minute conversation.

There was no coincidence in me meeting this man who's family endured what I could not even fathom at the time.  No coincidence at all.  And this is why I say, God provided us with everything that we needed, every step of the way.  Even by beginning to prepare me ahead of time without my knowing.

As soon as my water broke, and I was on the way to the hospital, and among all the thoughts rolling through my head, I was not hopeless.  I didn't feel despair.  I knew that I was not in a good situation, but aside from trying my best to control my body that was totally out of control at this point, all I could think of was there were these twins out there somewhere that were born last year at 24 weeks and they were OK.  That's all I needed to know.  There was hope.

It was as if God planted a little seed in my head and said, "here, hold on to this..." because I was going to need it sooner than I could have ever imagined.  I'm so grateful for that one minute conversation on a Tuesday morning in the back of the dentist office that played so clearly in my head as we made our way to Rex before the sun came up.

Those twins were OK.  There was HOPE.  This was NOT over.