Convinced

When I was in labor, I have to confess that I didn't have to experience a great deal of pain. Once I reached 3 1/2 centimeters, I got the epidural and slept during much of my labor. When it came time to push, though, I felt tremendous pressure in my abdomen, and I wondered, " How do people do this more than once?" After I got home and realized Andrew and I had survived the first few nights without seeming to have done any lasting damage to our child, I began to understand how it is that people "do this" more than once.

Then the other day I was driving home from Gwen's house, and I thought about all the people who waited with Andrew and me in anticipation of Gabriel's birth. And they were equally excited with me to meet him once he arrived. I thought, "All children should be born with as much love surrounding them as Gabriel has." And then I got misty-eyed thinking about all the children who are born but not wanted. And I became even more determined that Andrew's and my family will be mixed in more ways than one: We will adopt a child or children at some future date(s). And when I read my devotional today - out of a great book called Baby Boot Camp - the verse was from the first chapter of first Samuel, when Hannah finds herself so desperate for a child that when she prays, no words come from her mouth. The accompanying story told of a young girl the author knew in high school who aborted her baby. This young girl at first had the support of the author, but later the author changed her mind after seeing this verse on the nursery wall in the home of a family who already had one adopted child and was anxiously awaiting another:

"Not flesh of my flesh, nor bone of my bone, but yet, miraculously, my own! Never forget for a single minute, you weren't born in my heart, but in it."

Faithful readers, forgive my new-mother-weepiness. But I have to take time today to thank God for all the people He's put in my life to love me and my son.