Chapter One: Journaling

1/20/06 – Sharon Ellis
The following is a journal entry from January 20, 2006. We thought this was the end of the story, but now we know it was just the beginning of Sprout’s story…

“I’m re-reading the book A Deeper Shade of Grace by Bernadette Keaggy (Phil Keaggy’s wife). I read it years ago. I’m not sure how or why I even have this book. Bernadette wrote it to give others hope. (After loosing five children.) For Christmas this year, my dear friend Cris gave me a silver star ornament with the word HOPE carved in it. After a year full of words like ‘rare’, ‘unusual’, (referring to my mom’s cancer) and ‘obliterated’ (referring to my uterus), you suddenly find yourself living in irony. Irony is not pretty. It doesn’t feel good and it takes you off any pedestal or throne you ever thought you were on. (As if I’m above anything like that happening to me or my family.)

The doctor’s told Bernadette that her miscarriage “would have no effect on future pregnancies.”
That’s exactly what we thought and were even told. (We experienced a miscarriage in May 2005)

Phil Keaggy says, “All that from His wisdom flows.”
It hurts my pride to know that God knows something else. Like something else…more tragedy is down the road, around the corner. And it is God’s best that I do not have a baby. I’m not meant to have a child? Brad & I aren’t meant to have a child together? There is a deep, unsettling, sobering thought. I can’t shake it.

‘Try not to get your hopes up…Hope? What else is there?’ (Keaggy, 60).

Right now the only hope I have is carved in that silver star.”
Sharon Ellis, Jan. ‘05