A Gift...

…from the God of the Universe. That’s what occurred to me while I sat in the darkness cradling my sleeping baby boy--his pudgy hands clasped over his round belly that gently rose and fell with soft baby breaths, and his angelic face illuminated in the dimness of the nightlight. My heart ached as I thought of how we hadn’t really planned him, but the laws of nature and God’s sovereign plan came together despite ourselves. We flirted with the odds that single solitary time, knowing where babies come from, knowing that someday we wanted another child, knowing that we didn’t think we were ready for it just yet.

Then I wondered for the next couple weeks. Dear Hubby dismissed me when I pointed out the possibility. I tested at the first possible opportunity. Negative. I was relieved. Dear Hubby was unfazed, unconcerned. He didn’t believe in the first place that it was a concern. I resumed drinking Diet Coke. I scrubbed the kitchen floor with ammonia and other assorted chemicals. I dyed my hair. I wished I’d gone ahead and taken the Sudafed I had wanted a week or so earlier when I was fighting off a miserable cold. But despite the negative test result, there was still a nagging “perhaps?” in the back of my mind. I waited another week, counting the minutes, impatiently waiting for the next opportunity to test again. This time it was positive. There were definitely two lines. I didn’t know how to respond. I handed the test stick to Dear Hubby and waited for his response, which was something like, “Hmm” as in—“Well whadda ya know?” We didn’t say much else about it, but went on about our workdays while it began to soak in. And I tested again the following week for good measure.

We wanted to try for a girl whenever we were ready. There’s some science behind it. It worked when we conceived Dear Daughter. I counted the days of my cycle and factored in the day we conceived and I knew we had “blown it.” I hoped and hoped for the next 20 weeks that the ultrasound would show a girl. It showed a boy. It became clear that none of this was going the way we would have planned it.

“Thank God none of this went the way we would have planned it,” I thought to myself as I sat in the dark holding my beautiful, perfect baby boy and contemplating how he came to be…amazed at how God often blesses us with so much more than that for which we ask (Ephesians 3:20)…amazed at how God knows us so much better than we even know ourselves…that His ways are Perfect. Amazed at the beautiful gift that is my son…a gift that no “accident” or simple force of nature could produce…a gift from the God of the Universe who somehow saw fit to create this child and place him in my arms in the midst of it.