On a day in the middle of 2013, approximately two and a half years after my second son was born, I was finally ready to make peace with our little family. Before our first son joined us, even before we lost the one before him, I was mom to a little girl named Evelyn Reese. I was completely convinced, from the moment we decided to "start trying" to have kids, that our firstborn would be a girl. God, in all his infinite wisdom, certainly knew it would be a bad idea to send an unsuspecting little male child into this family. Aside from my ineptitude when it comes to sports and the fact that my mom's handmade smocked outfits would look ludicrous on a boy, I simply WANTED a girl. Oh, how I wanted to cradle little Evelyn Reese in all her smocked-frock glory and buy her lacy aprons for Saturday morning baking and read her fairy tales (Grimm's, not Disney, for those of you keeping score).
We would call her Evie.
And then the baby came. And of course, we named him Liam.
And two years later when the second boy arrived, we went ahead and gave him Evie's middle name. I wasn't even that hung up on the girl thing anymore. I had discovered that my husband could throw a ball and that some little boys actually like to bake and they even enjoy fairy tales if there's a dragon involved and you occasionally make a monster show up to eat the clueless princess. I relish in being a mom to boys. It's sacred and precious and a different blog all in itself. So when Simon was in his second year, it was with zero regret that I kissed Evelyn good-bye.
I remember the day. I was driving home after running a few errands. The boys were with my mom. I was thinking about how fantastic they are, probably because they were absent and the memory of a mother is favorably selective when it comes to her babies. It sounds trite, but my heart settled into a place of contentment. I thought about how I knew my husband didn't want more kids, and how Si was coming out of his baby phase and this opened up a whole new world of things we could enjoy as a family--including service. I was convinced there was more to my life than just motherhood, and I was eager to "do some volunteer work," that golden star of stay-at-home-mom achievement. I was aware of a growing tension between the gospel and the way we were doing life--and with Simon nearly old enough to grab a seat, I was ready to board this train and move on down the tracks to.....where? Anywhere. Anywhere but more babies.
And with that image, I turned my thoughts to our Evie. I had felt so sure of her five long years ago, and God had brought me so far from that point. I trusted his judgement, finally, and I was in a good place. I congratulated myself on my stunning ability to adapt. (I have so much to learn.) And then I acknowledged that we wouldn't be having that girl. And that I was okay with that. And then, as I drove along musing on how in-tune I was with God's vision, heaven ripped through to my reality, and the Holy Spirit did that thing where it dumps a torrent of knowledge upon my heart, and I thought my chest would burst, and within a few seconds that knowledge had seeped warmly into my bones, and in that moment I knew that another child was waiting for me. Oh, and also? That I needed to go find her.
What I did NOT do was stop to consider if what I had just experienced was actually an act of God. No no, we had been this route before, the Big Guy and myself. God has a habit of skipping the whole gentle "Good Shepherd" thing with me. For some reason he has determined that it is ineffective (possibly because I largely ignored him for the first twenty-four years of my life. Whatever.), and he goes straight for the lightning-bolt approach. My Holy Spirit moments could be compared to the time I slammed my pinkie toe into a door hard enough to separate most of the nail from my foot. I experienced about thirty seconds of intense, unmistakable agony. But then my body's natural defenses kicked in and the sharp pain sank into a flood of warm endorphins, and I actually felt kind of comforted and good even though I knew in my head that at some point in the near future my toenail was probably going to pop off.
God works like a crushed pinkie toe. Just go with it.
Anyway, like I said, we had been here before. The first time was not long after the first miscarriage and also not long before I became pregnant with Liam. I was standing in church, broken and unsure, and I remember thinking, "Okay, God. Just do what you're going to do. Just let me learn whatever it is you want me to learn so I can get on with my life. I'm giving it up. Just do your thing, but please, for the love, do it quickly." And then I felt a promise from God, so suddenly and assuredly that I had to sit down with the force of it, that we would have babies, and that they would be okay, and that God would bless our family through them. I knew then and there that 1. God was real, and he was ready to leap in with his presence and fill any space I was willing to make for him, and 2. I never wanted to be far from that presence again.
And if I have bungled this retelling and caused that moment to sound hokey and cliched, let me just assure you: He has kept his word.
Not only that, but all subsequent moments of revelation (Holy Spirit smack-downs, if you will) have centered around our kids. I knew, in the same way, that I was pregnant with Simon and that his pregnancy would be a healthy one. (Please bear in mind that we had just lost a second baby in utero.) There was a moment of crisis when I was in labor with Simon that I lost sight of this. The Pitosin from my induced labor was too much for him, and his heart rate was dropping, and then drugs were stopped and labor stalled and there were talks of a c-section and questions about his well-being and I was lying in bed wrapped up in despair and panic and then there came God, thundering, "Don't you trust me?" It was a kind of ultimatum. He expected an answer. I gave it, and about thirty minutes later my body pulled itself together and labor resumed and Si was, of course, fine. And just for the sake of full disclosure, let me include the time that I knew (in the same way) that music would be important to Simon's life. (What the WHAT? I'm interested to see how that plays out and why I needed to know that. Dear God, let him become a famous classical pianist so I can live vicariously.)
These moments have been crucial to my relationship with God--each one of them leaves me hungry to draw nearer to him, and each one reassures me that he is, in turn, drawing us nearer. And by the time I had the Evie Moment (email me with better titles for that, please and thank you), I knew what I was dealing with and didn't need to question the source. So I would really love to tell you that, upon realizing God had spoken yet another promise into my family by informing me that he intends for us to have more kids, what I did was pull over, hop out of the car, remove my shoes, and dance around like David in a holy moment--but alas, I hadn't yet considered having to record this for posterity. So what actually happened was rather uninspiring: I drove the last two minutes to my house, parked the car, turned my head toward God (that's upward, in case you didn't attend Sunday School as a child), and said kind of pissily through clenched teeth, "What in the CRAP?" This was followed by a moment of self-collection, after which I calmly inquired: "Okey doke, then. Where is she?"
Crickets. And then a tiny, still voice from the flood of knowledge in my veins: "Just go."
It took awhile, but we're going, though God knows where. I was petrified to tell my husband about all this, and mercifully God brought his heart around to adoption sooner rather than later, and he approached me a few months after, right around Christmas, with his dreams about adding kids to our family. And from there the tension I mentioned earlier grew and grew until I became this crazy person praying crazy person prayers into a blog and giving up social media and clearing out my house to make room for whatever God wants to put there, and then the tension burst like a grenade and now here we are, letting God pull together the pieces one at a time as he reveals his plan for our family. And he is GOOD, and faithful. He is so very, very faithful. He keeps his promises. They are new every morning. Therefore, I will hope, and follow. And keep on with the going.
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