I wrote this on 12/26/2012, the day before Benaiah's birthday last year. I didn't post it because I didn't have any pictures to go with it and then found it today when I [finally] got on to add a new blog post. I know it's old and still has no pictures, but as I sit here sweating in southeast Asia, anticipating returning to our country tomorrow, it was good to reflect on my feelings and his faithfulness from a month ago. Thanks for grace!
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I couldn't help but worry as we put B to bed the night before his test, as we got him up the next morning, and fed him breakfast. And then I remembered...
“and who of you by worrying an add a single hour to your [son’s] life? ”
So I stopped worrying, for a minute. And then they put a needle in his hand and he cried and I cried, and both J and I were flooded with memories of the day we almost lost our son. But the One who spared our son but didn't spare his own, it was Him sustained us. He that choose to give him up for us all that one day we might be freed from defects, and death, and the curse in our tainted blood that pulses through our tainted veins. And with a clean bill of health just days before Christmas and a big move on the horizon, we clung even more tightly to our own baby and his sister while celebrating the birth of the only one whose blood was never tainted. We sang a little louder and we spent a little less and we talked, a lot, to our families, to each other, to our Father. We've been busy packing boxes and making plans. There are big changes in our near future and we find ourselves humbled, overwhelmed, and even a little confused at times. It's difficult this thing that we do, but Christmas is an excellent time to reflect on the importance of something other than ourselves. And in the midst of the mayhem that is packing and cleaning and sorting and storing, we took time to teach the tiny ones entrusted to us, to admire the creche, to read the story, to connect the dots. We sang "Angels we have heard on High" a hundred times and "Away in the Manger" at least a hundred and one. We relished the wide eyed wonderment of connections made and truth internalized for the first of many times. We planted some seeds and watered a little. We applauded the unstable steps of a little mighty man making his way. I think we all feel this way most of the time. Steady as you go, beloved, one step at a time, one day at time. 6 moves in 3 years, coast to coast, and across the oceans, and some days I convince myself that life would just be perfect if I had a shower in my apartment. But I remember last years' awkwardness, the cumbersome movements of carrying life within my own body. I remember the anticipation, the intermittent pain, and the ache in my arms to hold my own son. And after two days of labour and two of the longest hours of my life, I joined the ranks of generations of women in childbirth. And I remembered that virgin giving birth in a stable. I looked at my son with the same depth of love I have for my daughter and yet so different and thought to myself, "You are Moses!" How much more must she have thought so? That virgin in the stable. This one who has finally come, coming forth from her own body, the long awaited rescuer of her country and her people and herself and the world - forever. And where as the time gone? 2000 years since the baby in the stable, and an entire year tomorrow since our own son took his first breath and 50 weeks exactly since he almost breathed his last and our lives changed forever. The smallest cold, the tiniest cough and I hold him in my arms willing him to live, begging the one who made him to let us switch places, telling him again and again I'd gladly trade my life for this baby's. Then I remember, he did that for us, and the wonder of the manger finds its true beauty in the tragic redemption of the cross. And goodbyes to grandparents and next years lonely holidays and the moving and sadness and frustration all melt into this reality,
“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
And worry gives way to wonder.