Late Christmas day I stood in the kitchen washing dishes. My feet were tired and I was generally just emotionlly and physically tired. I love Christmas, but after a long two days of last minute shopping, hauling gifts to grandparents, hauling gifts home, and cooking my body was exhausted. I quickly realized that maybe there were one too many toys that made various squeaks and noises. Couple that with the occasional sibling argument over a toy, and I was ready to lock myself away for some peace and quiet.
I love to look back on these moments because God has a way of subtly shifting the heart's focus. As the ipod played Christmas music in the background a song came on that instantly took me back six years in time. I was a broken woman, broken from loss. I was still recovering from a miscarriage two months prior. It was a pregnancy I had not particularly planned or been too enthusiastic about in the beginning which made the eventual loss all the more devastating. God had been working in me to build the heart of a mother. Before I was all too selfish and absorbed with the inconvenience a child could bring. As my heart and mentality began to change I was crushed when it all seemed to be ripped away with one trip to the doctor and a heartbreaking sonogram.
That Christmas all my heart longed for was a child, not a baby to replace the one lost, but to soothe the aching mother's heart that had been conceived, but not fully formed. Little did I know that Christmas season that just two weeks later I would find out I was carrying our beloved Kaylie. She was my Christmas gift, and one that would carry Chris and I to a new level of love as people and parents. God was faithful to us that Christmas and has continued that work of chiseling a mother's heart into me.
As I came back to the reality of loud toys and boisterous children I looked at the situation from a different place. These children are my gifts and my inheritence. It may be crazy and I may be tired, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
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