Sweet girl, I started this note to you yesterday, but it seems fitting that today – not the first, but the second of this new, momentous month – would be the day I finish it. Because that’s just how things are around here. I don’t always get to the things I think I’d like to when I think they should happen, but the “shoulds” in my life are becoming so much less a part of who I am. Instead, life happens and most times the timing is so very, very right and not of my own doing. Just another, beautiful thing about the way your coming into my world has made it better. How God is taking all of the rough edges of my heart and making them smooth.
It is November. The month you are due to arrive. And as much as I say I am open to letting you come whenever you will, I pray everyday that you are a November baby. So that all of the “next months” of October and the “this months” of the last day and a half would be true. I am patient, yes. And every doctor visit of the last few weeks, as they are weekly now, show no indication of an early November arrival. Your dadda and I are enjoying the final touches, shall we say, of getting ready for your being here. And you have made carrying you such a joy, such an honor, and so very wonderful, I am soaking up these last days of having you with me in this way.
But I am so very ready to see your face. Sometimes, as I ride around town between coffees or lunches with friends, trips to Target, Lowes, and Goodwill for “just one more thing” for your nursery or projects around the house or crafts, I look back in the rearview mirror where reflected back is another mirror that you’ll soon look into with your beautiful eyes, tucked safely into a carseat your dadda installed just this weekend, and I just wonder. Sometimes, when he isn’t looking, I study your dadda’s face so that I can know without knowing, somehow, who you’ll be. And then I look at my own self in the mirror and think the very same. What a sweet, sweet mystery.
And goodness, it is beautiful around here these days and it only adds to the wonder. Some days, I am so full of emotion and gratitude I’m about to burst and I think, “I wish she could just know.” And often, your dadda will ask me “What do you think God says to babies when they are in the womb?” Somehow, I’d like to think you do know and that is part of what He tells you. That somewhere, in the molecular and microscopic workings of who you are and have been created to be is imprinted with so much more than cells and DNA and scientific code. You are a product, a creation, of Love. Of a Creator who has made such a sweet spring, a vivid summer, and a vibrant autumn that would be the context in which you have been living and growing inside of me. And somehow all of those seasons and the experiences I have had in them, are a part of who you are becoming.
I have so enjoyed the freedom that has come in making your dadda, our life at home, and getting ready for you of utmost priority these last few weeks. I am always the best version of myself when I put, as a very wise author named C.S. Lewis whom I will introduce you to someday says, “first things first” and clearing my schedule of so much has made that so very possible. And as I sit here in your just-about-finished nursery, which I plan to share about later this week, I can’t help but be overcome, again, with such a sweet, sweet thankfulness that fills me up to overflowing. Just another thing to be thankful for in this month where gratitude comes so naturally.
Love all 3 of you!
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