The number of deaths in Turkey and Syria has now surpassed 47,000. Can you even begin to feel the pain those left behind are experiencing. Many have buried entire families; the loss is staggering.

I walk quietly these days, praying. What else can I do? I want to get on a plane. Do something. One thing for sure, I do not want to forget this tragic unexpected happening.

Scenes on social media and words of passionate reporters continue to jar my safe environment. I heard one man, “I have lost everything. Everything,” he moaned. “We only have God now”.

Disaster strikes and often we are not prepared.(see blog the earthquake here)

Then good things, sweet news, come, and our hearts can smile again. Our family has known and has been expecting new babies, twins, for almost nine months now.  Early this morning, we received word they had arrived late last night in a way and time, totally unexpected.  Evidently they were ready. Little Zoe, weighing 5 lb, 5 oz came within five minutes of her announcement that she was ready!… at home with no medical help from the outside world; little Daniel, at 6 lbs, 5 oz was a few moments later with an EMT nearby. Our granddaughter, Hailey with our grandtwins … Zoe and Daniel

Daniel is having a bit of breathing trouble these hours and has been taken to another hospital with a NICU unit. Another unexpected happening.

“Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning, great is Your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22,23).

My thoughts turn to the story of the little girl born under the rubble in Syria. After found still connected to her mother, she was separated from her maternal life support and bundled away. She is the only survivor of her immediate family.

I cannot begin to understand these tragic moments, but they come… to all of us, in some form or another… within our own small worlds. But then… ready or not… little miracles appear.

While we simply cannot fathom the pains of life, we can rejoice in the gifts that come. And they come… usually unexpected.

Yes, I cry with news of darkness and death in the rubble, but I smile with hope for new life.

(Our little twins came on my mother’s birthday. She would have been 99. I am too sad for the displaced, the sorrowing, the confused in the middle East to write coherently, and too excited to wonder at the plans for these new lives… so this blog is short. You will be glad!)

… ready or not… life comes.