Imperfect Prose Link-Up: We are the Good News People

She’s my youngest sister and I’m standing in her house in Calgary, one of the homes that didn’t get flooded and we’re making pizza. I’ve pulled and prodded the dough and she’s slathering spaghetti sauce and shaved mozzarella cheese.

We were pregnant at the same time, just a month ago, and here she is, still pregnant and due the same month I would have been, this coming January.

She looks at me. “I didn’t know if I should tell you, but the baby is doing alright,” she says, because she had thought she might miscarry too, the hormones being so low, but here she is at 11 weeks and the baby still growing.

I turn then and I see her. My little sister, the one with blond hair and rosy cheeks and large blue eyes, who stood so tiny in her pink Girl Scouts outfit and looked at the world from behind long lashes. She was the quiet one who made sure everyone was okay, and today she is a counselor.

“I am so happy for you,” I say, swallowing.

“Are you sure?”

I nod. “My loss is sad, yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m excited for you. Being pregnant is a beautiful thing and I’m so very glad you didn’t have to go through the pain of miscarriage.”

And tucked in the folds of that difficult moment is the decision to become a Good News Woman.

I am deciding to purposely seek Good News and share in the delight with others. Maybe it’s someone’s two-book contract. Maybe it’s a promotion, or a trip, or a birth announcement. Whatever it is, I will seek to unite in the celebration of others, instead of being jealous of them. Because jealousy tears us apart. It makes me ugly and sad and yet as soon as I say to myself, “Wow, if I were them, I would be so happy—how wonderful, that they can be that happy!” something in my spirit lifts, like the blue wings of a bird and it flies, setting me free.

And in the same breath I will bring Good News to those that mourn and long to be comforted, the good news that they are not alone, that I have been there, and I will sit with those who are mourning and be a physical reminder of Immanuel.

The Good News of the gospel is exactly this: We have something to look forward to—heaven, and we are not alone on this earth, because of the Holy Spirit.

My sister and I cut the pizza and pull out paper plates, and Trent prays. “Bless the hands that prepared this food…” And I look at my little sister’s hands, and I say Amen.

Bless her hands, her even as he continues to bless all of us, with the grace to handle sadness and the wisdom to embrace joy.

For we are the Good News People.