dear little girl

I love you so much. I've seen you on the screen twice now, and the second time the nice lady was able to assure us that, yes, you're a little girl! ever since that little revelation, I havent been able to think straight. of course if the lady is wrong and you happen to be a boy, I will love you just the same: with my whole heart, no matter what. there simply isnt anything you can do to keep me from loving you. sorry if that may sound silly to you whenever you might be reading this, but know that it's quite true.

anyway, the news of your girlness is still sinking in. it's a lot like when we found out we were pregnant with you (and your mama said it was even better). suddenly you seem a lot more real, and we've started to call you by the name we've picked. I kiss you goodbye when I go to work and love to say hello as often as I can.

dont go thinking this is a start of a trend, but the first thing I did after we found out you were a girl was buy you a cute outfit. I really couldnt resist. thankfully your aunt said we can borrow your cousin's baby clothes, so between that and Caleb's stuff and your grandparents (who are sure to send mountains of cuteness), that may be the last outfit I buy for you for a long time. we shall see.

I really hope you enjoy growing up with your big brother. I guess neither of you will be able to remember life without eachother, and I hope you love eachother for your whole lives. I love my sister, but we're 4 years and a lot of personality differences apart, so we're not all that close. so I hope yall will get along reasonably well, and care for eachother as you grow. I'm sure there will be conflicts and hard times, but remember to be humble, to forgive, and above all to love.

suddenly I'm starting to think of all the scary stuff that comes with raising a girl. first off, I hope for everyone's sake that the trend in clothes swings back to loose-fitting stuff. but if it's still skin-tight, low-cut, almost-nothing, and you want to look like that, we're gonna have some problems. I'm not afraid to tell you what goes through a guy's mind, but perhaps your mama should explain that kinda thing. but I hope you'll grow up understanding that you are loved, that you are beautiful (and I know, I've seen you already!) and looking like the latest trends is far less important than being your beautiful self. sorry if I'm getting preachy here, but a daddy's gotta look after his little girl.

when it comes down to it, I know that all I can really do is entrust your life and your heart to Jesus and live faithfully as a family. we're already praying that you'll know and love Him as soon as you can. you're His covenant child, and He's made special promises to you and to us, and I hope will all my heart that you'll take up those promises. I'll try to live in such a way that will help you to know Him, but I want you to know that sometimes I will fail, and I hope you forgive me when I do.

we're so glad you're a part of our growing family. we may not have planned your arrival so soon, but we recently remembered that God had you and your life planned since before the begining of the world. you were always meant to be a part of us, and you're coming exactly on time. I cant wait to hold you in my arms.

love,
daddy

another miracle

dear baby,

you're a little early, just like your big brother was. we didnt think you would show up for at least another year, but here you are, 12 weeks old in your mama's tummy, and your brother just turned 9 months old. people must think we're crazy for having another baby so soon, and I suppose that we are. while we're a little surprised, we're so excited that you're with us, and I cant wait to see you on the screen in 6 weeks, and to hold you in my arms in 6 months.

sorry it's taken a little while to write, but things are pretty busy these days. your brother is zooming around the house, getting into pretty much everything. while he's a little tiring to keep up with, he's such a joy to us, and I can hardly believe that now we have double joy!

I want you to know that even though you may be the 2nd kid, that doesnt mean you're 2nd priority. I already love you with my whole heart (just like I love your mama and brother), and you cant do anything to change that. I'm sure you'll soon see that there are good and not-quite-as-good things about being the 2nd kid, but whatever happens, we know that God has put you in our family at the exact right time.

while I know that people have babies all the time, I want you to know that you too are our little miracle. God just loves to surprise us and bless us richly, and you, my child, are indeed a blessing. I hope that you'll soon know God's blessings in Jesus, and that you'll be a blessing to everyone you meet.

now I have a request for you: will you please stop making your mama so sick? I suppose it hasnt been too bad, but throwing up in the middle of the night is never fun. also, it seems like you've got quite an appetite, and at times we wonder if there's more than one of you in there? if you are indeed plural, we'll be quite overwhelmed for a while. but maybe you're just more hungry than your brother, which wouldnt be a bad thing at all. soon we'll find our for sure if you're a yall or not.

I love you so much, and I cant wait to hold you in my arms.

love,
daddy

choices

dear son,

sorry it's been a while since I've written TO you, but I've certainly done little else but think and write about you. I figured you may want to be clued in on some choices we've made that pretty much directly affect you. of course God in His sovereignty has led us to these choices, and we're always trying to follow his lead. so here goes, in no particular order:

we live in what I'd call a lower-middle class neighborhood. grandma thinks it's unsafe, and I'm sure she wishes we were in a more suburban setting. but we love being close to our friends and church, and I dont think we can afford suburbia anyway. sure there's drug dealers down the road, but God takes care of us. we're actually surrounded by Christian families, some of which we know quite well. sometimes I wish it was quieter and safer, but we're glad to live here.

your mom works "in the home" as they say. I'm so glad that she doesn't have to worry about working elsewhere. at first it was hard for her, but now she loves taking care of us, and she does it quite well. I'm so glad that my job is able to take care of our needs, but some months it's literally a miracle that we come out with a positive balance. God takes care of us.

I love my job, but I'm definitely not a ladder-climber. it's much more important to me to have a workplace that values family time. since I think work is the means to taking care of the family (as opposed to making money), I dont ever see us being rich and comfortable, but I think that's for the best (of course in the big picture, we ARE rich and comfortable, but hopefully you know what I mean). we dont have fancy stuff, but we definitely have everything we need, and a lot of the things we want as well, so there's no room for complaints.

oh yeah, we have lots of college debt, because we chose to go to Christian colleges, but we dont regret it at all. well maybe sometimes, but we sure learned lots of good stuff in college that made us who we are now. maybe we'll be able to save to help you pay for college. maybe not. maybe your grandparents will help...

back to your mom: I'm so glad that she can stay home with you and whatever siblings you may have (hopefully at least a couple). it's really important to us to raise you up well, and we know that the best person God has for that job is us (as crazy as that may sound!). we have lots of ideas about how that might work, but only God knows what's ahead. we just pray that He'll show us the way.

this is somewhat random: we have a deep mistrust of TV. books are much much better. I was raised with lots of TV, and I think I missed out on a lot. lots of kids watch lots of TV, but hopefully you wont. it's just better that way.

your mom and I love eachother very much. sometimes it's hard, but we choose to love because Jesus loves us. it's an amazing mystery really. we'll see how it all works out when you're in the picture. that's the cool thing about love: adding someone doesnt divide it, but rather it multiplies! we love you so much already -- wait until you're in our arms.

finally and most importantly, we choose to trust Jesus with all our lives, and we can only do this because He sent His Spirit to us first. over and over He has proven Himself faithful. if you ever doubt, just remember that your very life is an answer to prayer. remember how, just before you came along, God healed your mom's body from terrible sickness. remember how He knit you in her tummy and kept you safe. remember that, despite our constant failings, God still loves us and even died for us.

my son, our covenant child, for your entire life, however long or short it may be, I want you to learn one thing: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

see you soon.
love,
daddy

miracle

you're early. almost impossibly early. in fact, I'd thought you'd never come, so I quit looking for you. but here you are, almost 12 weeks along, and you're already our little miracle. I know people say that kind of thing all the time, but I think I've got a good reason for using such language. if it's not too much for you, allow me to explain a little.

your mom has had some health issues over the years, even though she's still pretty young. she's got something called polycystic ovarian syndrome (pcos), which is apparently one of the leading causes of infertility. I won't gross you out with details, but I was pretty sure you wouldn't be coming along until we saw more than a few doctors to help us out. trust me, the chances of you surprising us like you did were pretty slim.

and she's also got something called fibromyalgia. hopefully by the time you're reading this your mom's fibro will be under control, but last year was pretty rough. it's a little complicated, but the bottom line was constantly sore muscles along with chronic fatigue and lots of other weird health issues. there's apparently a good chance you may have fibro too, so we'll keep an eye out and take good care of you either way. we found a good treatment, and that was coming along pretty well, so well that we started thinking about you, just a little.

your mom was thinking about you more than I was. not that I wasn't excited about the possibility of you coming along, but for a while all I could think of was the struggles with doctors and treatments and such. after battling fibro for a year, I was pretty tired, and not quite sure about heading into another round of such things right away.

so your mom, my beautiful wife, reminded us to pray. so we prayed that God would grant us the blessing of having you without having to worry and struggle about health stuff. I hope you don't inherit my bad attitudes, because I was pretty skeptical. after more than a few years of various difficulties, I was expecting the worst. but yet I prayed, trying to repent of my faithlessness, remembering how good God truly is to us, knowing that He wants good things for us.

it turns out, if our calculations and memories are correct, that He answered our prayers before we even prayed them (which is one of my favorite things about God and prayer: if He's beyond time, then it doesn't matter if we pray before or after, right?). it seems that you were already on the scene, our embryonic little baby. of course since we didn't expect you, we weren't on the lookout and you remained undetected for over a month! I was certainly shocked when I found out you were hiding in your mommy's tummy. even now you hardly seem real. I just can't wait to hold you in my arms, to admire your tiny fingernails, to play you a lullabye. august seems so far away!

for a while there we thought you even beat the odds of birth control (which is about 1 in 100 apparently). your mom was on the pill for a little while to help with some of her pcos issues, but it seems you came along just before then. yet it wouldn't surprise me if you did beat those odds, because as far as I'm concerned you've beat odds far steeper than that.

so you see: you're our miracle. now don't go thinking that you had anything to do with being a miracle, because it's pretty clear that God did all the work. He took your mom, with bad ovaries, bad back, bad muscles, put her together with me, with a bad attitude and often wandering heart, and with our love made you, even before we remembered to pray! I know you're not perfect, but I pray that you'll know that you are a miracle from God, who has been made with love. Even more, I pray that your heart will someday soon be remade by the miracle of Jesus.

I love you.

first sight

I saw you for the first time on Wednesday. You've got a big head, you know? You must take after me, but hopefully you'll grow into it.

We waited 23 days since we knew you were with us to get our first glimpse, and there you were, your little heart racing. And you wiggled and danced a little too. Maybe you didn't like that weird machine encroaching on your territory. Now we know about when we'll see you face-to-face: early August! That seems so far away. One of the books tells me you're getting 100,000 new nerve cells every minute. We just pray that God will knit you together so you can serve Him well.

I want you know how much of a miracle you are, and always will be. I'll tell you more about that later, but I don't want you to forget that.

I love you.