Tuesday, a Big Day

I’m really looking forward to Tuesday. It’s Heidi’s birthday, and we are going for our second visit to the doctor, this time to hear the heartbeat! (In case you didn’t know, we’re having a baby! Heidi is due September 16) By then she will be starting week 13.

We really feel blessed by all this. Blessed, but surprised. God’s timing is, it seems, strange. Just when we were at peace with the thought that we may never have our children through natural birth (adoption was certainly on the table), and just when we thought It’s a good thing we don’t have any kids right now, with me being in school another year, maybe more after that, etc., God smiled on us and reminded us in a beautifully poetic way that "in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). We have jokingly said that if it’s a boy, we’ll name him Isaac, which means "he laughs." Perhaps God laughed (in a "bless your heart" way) at our thinking.

We’re ready. We’ve loved this child for seven years already. That’s about how long it took for us to conceive. And I’ve gotta tell you, it was a profound moment when I first said the words (in a prayer) "our child." Wow. Every parent can identify with that feeling, and with the words of Psalm 139:13-18:

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know them full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.