Dear Baby G,
You make life exciting these days, never knowing at which moment my phone may ring and I’ll be grabbing my bags and heading south; hoping I will make it in time to be with your mom and dad in the delivery room. I’ve never been anywhere but in the bed in a delivery room. I’m not sure how I will feel there with your dad watching the little girl to whom I gave birth giving birth to you. I’ve been trying to tell that girl, your mama, not to be afraid. I think maybe the health professionals these days give a few too many classes. They have your mom wondering if the most natural things in the world, like giving birth to you and breast-feeding you and nurturing you are extraordinary feats requiring exceptional ability. But you and I are on the same page about this. We know that just because you will be a boy with exceptional abilities to accomplish extraordinary feats, that doesn’t mean that it really takes a lot of know-how to get you going. God will just keep on doing what He has done for about 60 centuries and you will, with His help, make your entrance into the world whether your mom and dad remember all the stuff from childbirth class or not.
Still I am glad they wanted to go. You are a very blessed little boy. The majority of children in America today do not have two diligent parents who are married to and in love with each other. About one in five pre-born babies, like you, are not even wanted by their parents and their lives are terminated before they ever leave the womb. You are wanted, loved and joyfully anticipated by two parents and two sets of grandparents, neither of whom can quite comprehend why all of their friends who are grandparents have lost some of their social skills and a great many of their “other” interests. (You know who you are, you “Mimi”s and “Lolly”s.) I mean they seem normal till someone brings up some funny grandchild-ism. Then the conversation turns into a senior talk tourney where the object is to keep one-upping the tales of grandchild antics and the champion is determined by who told the last and loudest “little punkin” funny before the pictures started inevitably coming out. I said we do not fully understand the grandparent games, but I did not say, Baby G, that we do not want to play on your behalf!
And, by the way, sweet baby…your parents are crazy (in a good way, but they are crazy)! Did you know that while you were stretching and kicking and pushing with all your might on those hip bones, your mom and dad were moving into a new house??!! That right! At 39 weeks, your mom was moving! Thanks to Brian and Beth Giselbach, Glenn Colley, Mike, Beth and Will Tidwell and the great crew from Apologetics Press (www.apologeticspress.org…you should go buy a book and tell them I sent you!), we got that huge truck loaded! But did you know that the huge moving truck broke down on the way to that house and that all your sweet little belongings had to kind of slide toward the back of that truck as it was hooked up to a massive tow truck!!?? It was the sort of moving-truck-tow-truck day that you will dream about experiencing when you are three, but it was a nightmare for your folks. And then getting to your new house was an adventure, too. It was three days without water and four days without hot water! Your grandmother has not had a hot shower for three days now. (It feels like a South American mission trip!) And did you know that we checked into three hotels in a ten hour period as we tried to shield your mom (and me) from the cough we inevitably get from smoking rooms? (You can thank us later for the low numbers on your richter scale in there.)
But I said they are crazy in a good way. The good way is that all their moves, their decision-kind of moves and their real-truck-kind of moves, are because they love souls. I really believe that. And I really believe they love yours the most of all. They are in the business of helping kids to heaven as they work with Lads to Leaders and as Ben preaches for the Lightwood church. You are blessed to be in a family whose craziness is about the Lord’s business.
So some wee small hours in several mornings have made your sweet little room come together…and at last, I even got to wash your clothes…with running water! You have to move soon, too, and now you have a home! It may be the only room in your house that is “together”, but you have a bed, a changing table, a chair for being rocked and a closet full of clean clothes. You are blessed. I can’t wait to help teach you to say please and thank-you to your crazy mother and father. But, mostly, I’m excited to teach you to say thank-you to your all-providing, all-wise Father. He is the One who is always there in every wee small hour, making sure you have a forever home! I love you, Baby G!