Births and Birthdays

The first time I ever took a pregnancy test, felt that jolt of disbelief and wonder, and then got to tell Mike the miraculous and impossible news of an entire new life being joined to ours was only about two months into our marriage. 

We were just 23 years old then. 

And it's strange to think that now, at 46 (and Mike just barely turned 47), we are only just experiencing our very first stretch of years without the excitement (and sometimes fear) of another child coming. I miss the tie to heaven that always felt particularly keen during the repeating cycle of pregnancy and birth that was so interwoven into the makeup of our lives during our first two decades of marriage. The veil thinned during those times. And I got used to those thinnings--and all the accompanying insights and near-memories that accompanied them.

But, birthdays (of which we have plenty around here--thanks to those two decades of having children that I mentioned) are a good time to remember; a good time for my mind to circle back and, as Alma says "remember what the Lord has done for me".

Mette turned eight last week. She brought herself here, as you might recall, on Mike's 39th birthday.

As we celebrated their combined birthdays last Sunday, I told all of the kids about going into labor with Mette (you can read that story here), and about the four or five times, as labor became more apparent, that I began a prayer intending to ask for the Lord to have things wait, even for just one more day, but then felt a strong staying sort of hand urging me not to even offer that prayer or do anything that might complicate her coming right then. I still ponder on that forceful feeling and on the necessity of her coming when she did. We talked about that, and all of the unexpected wildness and pain and fear that accompanied her birth. And I told them how it wasn't until I finally got out of the surgery room and saw my parents anxiously waiting for me that I finally cried. (And then Abe and Daisy joked that I was crying because I remembered that I hadn't been able to clean the house before coming to the hospital and knew the bathrooms back home were still messy. Haha. Well. That might have been a small part of it.)

Anyway what a happy and glorious day of mortality August 13th is for our family! The day Mette and (39 years earlier) our Mike came to this earth. (We also told a little about his arrival and of how he was taken to a different wing of the hospital and nobody quite knew where Grandma Harris's new baby was for a minute!)

Happy birthday Mike and Mette!