Regina 
Five years ago I was rocking hips laboring with that firstborn. 15 hours deep into the pain and I hadn’t the faintest clue of the joy that was about to be mine. No idea how a racket of new cries would still and steal my heart. That one that made me a mom came in at a full 8 pounds and 1 ounce. I’ve heard about love at first sight, but this? No one can tell you about this, experience brings the knowledge of it. Words fail pitifully to explain how enraptured in love mommyhood makes you. How wound you are to little souls you didn’t even know just a few years before. How you can’t imagine them ever not being with you. How you would give your whole self without thought for them, because they are bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh, sons and daughters who bear your DNA strand and inherited your nose, his eyes, your mouth, his ears…. And when you’re a momma you hold their little faces and kiss them shamelessly on cheeks, before they realize that is not altogether cool. You steal their glances and their evening chats. You listen long and drink them in. Even when it’s just incoherent babbling somehow you just marvel that you’re beginning to understand who this little person is. How is it possible that God has folded us into such a miracle?
His name means Who is like the Lord? And who is like the Lord who creates, who speaks and it is so, who lifts up, and bows low? Who is like the Lord who puts breath in the lungs of us all? Who forgives? Who blesses? Who is like the Lord who gave us life and gives us little lives to raise, to love, to enjoy? And the one whose name means Who is like the Lord? looked up at me like he had known me forever and I held him while he ate and wondered at him while digging curled toes deep into carpet…the pain of learning to feed a baby for the first time with your own dripping milk. Don’t believe what they tell you at the hospitals, nursing hurts a bit at the first but it will subside (encouraging smile). And this boy, the first from my womb, brought with him an other worldly joy that still fills us up and fills His face with smiles. And who can laugh and run and jump and quote Scripture like that boy with that joy?
So God made me a mommy and I fell into it like it had been my world all along, a fate sown deep into my life. And I would look at the handsome face of my husband and smile and we would shake our heads together with wonder and marvel at every new thing that came out of this little joy. And I would sing-song to him, Baby boy-oy-oy you’re my baby joy-oy-oy!” we called him Baby Dude. And I think babies grow more by love than they do food. The more we loved him the more alive he became; the more entrenched we were in this boy we hadn’t know a week before. And has it been five years already? And how is over half my height already? And what is a mom to do with all this love?
He’s playing baseball now. We took him to that park when he was days old, he was strapped to my body then in one of those baby carriers. I held him and obsessively checked his breathing and enjoyed views of the creek and holding hands with the one who made him with me. And now we take him to that same park and he runs faster than any of us can (very true), and he hits balls and runs bases and he’s just a boy now, not a baby at all. And I marvel at the wonder. This boy growing up into Jesus, growing tall, growing handsome, growing strong, already headed up and away…. and I ponder. And I thank GOD, because I do not deserve any of this joy.
Who is like the Lord? Nobody. Nobody is like our God, so abundantly kind in the gifts he gives. A little boy who talks to God and loves God’s Word and who knows Christ. Only the Lord could do this in a heart. Only the Lord could teach a boy to say I have been sharing the Gospel with my sister, and I am going to do it tomorrow too. Because God told me to do it and so I did…. or I need to tell all my teammates about Jesus. Or Mom, we need to build our life on the Rock, on Jesus, and not listen to Satan because that’s building our life on the sand. Yeah, you can teach someone truth, but you can’t make them understand that’s the Spirit’s work and when He is at work in your son, barely five, you praise God, because that’s something all the best books and advice in the whole world cannot do.
So we pray for that boy child of ours already a leader, already turning his mind toward being a man (yeah it’s possible), and bow heads and bend knees in petition and thanks. And we take today and teach him just a bit more about Jesus, just a little more about love, and we’re learning too and this whole crew of curly-haired kids, and we turn our eyes upward and keep on heading home.
