This Year
"Hormones."
Kind of an ugly word to explain the flood of emotions, don't you think?
So many different things to hold in my heart this twenty-eighth birthday. So many things have changed so quickly in the space between my twenty-sixth and twenty-eighth birthday - I hadn't even met the man who woke me singing "Happy Birthday" so I would hurry to open the gift he would use to make my morning coffee for me, while our child kicked his or her greeting inside me.
My twenty-seventh birthday was just after our honeymoon. The newlywed stage is beautiful, but for all its thrills and despairs, treasured new things and bumbling adjustments, I don't wish to be back in that stage. How thankful I am for all we've learned, the trust we've built, the skills acquired for cheering each other on.
How much more we have to learn.
Each of us hold our everyday sorrows, together with the immense and humbling realizations of how much good we've been given.
Lord, we thank You for the time we had before we had to learn all the difficulties of pregnancy. Thank You for the ways You've equipped Damon to know what is most helpful as he cares for me. Thank You for helping me to move through the fear of the vulnerability of carrying a child into confidence and trust in Your hands that hold us all.
I can learn to rejoice in the beauty of being given a child as soon as we asked, even while I weep for another dear woman who has been praying for a child for years. I may have my fears about how we will care for this little one, and I can bring them to the Lord in the same breath as I bring the pregnant teens I love who will have a much more difficult time providing for their precious babies.
Joy and sorrow never come unmixed, do they? But oh, how much I grow in gratitude when I take and enter into them. Thank you, my friends, for rejoicing with me. Thank you, too, for opening your heart to share your weepings. Thank You, my Shepherd, for Your tears and Your pain, and thank You for Your delight.
Kind of an ugly word to explain the flood of emotions, don't you think?
So many different things to hold in my heart this twenty-eighth birthday. So many things have changed so quickly in the space between my twenty-sixth and twenty-eighth birthday - I hadn't even met the man who woke me singing "Happy Birthday" so I would hurry to open the gift he would use to make my morning coffee for me, while our child kicked his or her greeting inside me.
My twenty-seventh birthday was just after our honeymoon. The newlywed stage is beautiful, but for all its thrills and despairs, treasured new things and bumbling adjustments, I don't wish to be back in that stage. How thankful I am for all we've learned, the trust we've built, the skills acquired for cheering each other on.
How much more we have to learn.
Each of us hold our everyday sorrows, together with the immense and humbling realizations of how much good we've been given.
Lord, we thank You for the time we had before we had to learn all the difficulties of pregnancy. Thank You for the ways You've equipped Damon to know what is most helpful as he cares for me. Thank You for helping me to move through the fear of the vulnerability of carrying a child into confidence and trust in Your hands that hold us all.
I can learn to rejoice in the beauty of being given a child as soon as we asked, even while I weep for another dear woman who has been praying for a child for years. I may have my fears about how we will care for this little one, and I can bring them to the Lord in the same breath as I bring the pregnant teens I love who will have a much more difficult time providing for their precious babies.
Joy and sorrow never come unmixed, do they? But oh, how much I grow in gratitude when I take and enter into them. Thank you, my friends, for rejoicing with me. Thank you, too, for opening your heart to share your weepings. Thank You, my Shepherd, for Your tears and Your pain, and thank You for Your delight.
Comments