Grace Evelyn

Grace Evelyn I wait for you every morning.  We share a quiet conversation as we both wake for the day.  I turn to my side because, despite a meticulously crafted cocooon of pillows I've managed to flip on my back in the final hours of the morning.  I wait with anticipation for your movements within.  If your body is slow to wake, to move, then I push at you through the muscle and fiber and tissue that is the miracle of the womb.  Soon enough, to my relief and delight you begin to jab.  I imagine tiny fists stretching with the morning, finding contact with my nerve endings.  You punch then shift.  Sometimes despite your now cramped quarters you manage a roll.  When you do this my whole abdomen jumps to life, my skin stretches upward and my belly becomes misshapen with movement.  Only at this point do I feel the need to bring anyone else into our private world, our private conversation.

"Tony!  Come here!" I call from the bed into the bathroom where your Daddy is at the sink getting ready for the day.  "She's really moving!"

I desire looks, exclamations of awe and disbelief at the sight now before him.  Occassionally your daddy will turn just in time to see one of your persistent pushes against my flesh.  Most of the time, though, you grow still under his touch.  Four lives have graced my womb and only now at the last do I come to the realization that this business of jabs and punches, twitches and twirls are but a secret langauge between mother and child.  It is a quiet time, a sacred time.  As others move about their day unaware of the life growing, thriving - mere inches below a rounded stomach, the mother is every conscious of the life she carries.  The world moves unaware.  The mother does not.  In those moments of sacred life movements I think only of you baby girl and of Him.  I often pray, sometimes just still myself in the awe of it all.

Tomorrow, God willing, we will meet you Grace Evelyn.  Your feet and legs, arms and hands all tucked in tight will reach out and through to life, to this broken world waiting.  And Daddy and I will be there.  To sing you the familiar songs you have heard through water and flesh for months.  To whisper your name now loud and clear into the air so much thinner than the womb, "Grace Evelyn, welcome to this world!"  And you and I will no longer share a private conversation, the world will no longer be ignorant of your life. You will be here for all to see.  But baby girl, I won't forget the quiet mornings it was just you and me.  I will not forget the gift of carrying you for so long.

It would be a half-truth to omit that you come to our family after a difficult season.  Perhaps, even in the midst of a difficult season.  Maybe you will read my journals someday.  This blog.  My written prayers and wonder why you had to follow such a difficult time in our family's life.  You know that thing called Rett Syndrome?  Not your sister Luisa.  No not her because she is wonder and delight and joy and God's creation.  But that disease that makes her life more difficult, brings challenges to our family structure?  Perhaps you will feel you are in the shadow of that syndrome.  I surely hope not.  I pray not.  We will work towards not making you feel that way.  But baby girl you are not in the shadow of anything.  You are Grace Evelyn.  You are His creation.  And God has great things in store for you.

Your name, "Grace," means unearned favor or being gifted with something we do not deserve.  Grace is also the idea of being looked upon by God with His favor.  As we pray your name over you, we pray you will be the recepient of God's grace and also the dispenser of His grace to a world so desperately in need of that gift.  Also sweet girl, you are God's unearned gift to your Daddy and me.  Someday I will tell you the story of how in the midst of grief we lost sight of God's plan and in fear thought surely we needed to go a different path.  And how despite our plottings and plannings and decisions made in despair, God gave us the gift of you.  I will tell you that story someday and I hope you will smile with the knowledge of how loved, how desired you are....

Evelyn is your middle name.  It means "wished for child."  How perfect is Evelyn?  Wished for child.  Wished for Grace....  Also, Evelyn is the middle name of my mother, your Jean Jean.  Mothers and daughters.  You are my last daughter.  You should carry the name of the mother who helped your mother through all her pregnancies and newborns and child-rearing.  Someday I hope to be to you what your Jean Jean has been for me.  God willing, I will clean your kitchen and bring you coffee in the wee hours of the morning.  I will love your children and just be present.  Your name will remind me of my example of just how to do this mother thing....

So here's to tomorrow Grace Evelyn.  To meeting you for the very first time.  Wished for child.  Unearned favor.  Grace Evelyn....

This family of 5 is so excited to meet its new member - Grace Evelyn!!!

"For I am the Lord, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you."  Isaiah 41:13