One year ago….

Posted by Dea' on February 13, 2013 · 1 Comment 

This was me, one year ago this morning. It was 6:00am, I was showered and scared and about to drive to our local health center for my first ever experience with Cervadil in hopes of inducing laor with our youngest, who was apparently about twelve days overdue.

 

One year ago…wow.
One year ago, we were unsure if we were going to be able to stay in this community. After months of education, new locations, and unemployment, J had finally procured work about ten hours north for three weeks at a time. I was home with the two boys, heavily pregnant, and growing through a season of challenge.

Parenting was exhausting. Marriage was strained. Holding focus on the Good was a minute-by-minute exercise. While aware of strong currents towards change, the tiny, fragile, tendrils of growth, and the fact that this was actually a beneficial and fruitful season, it wasn’t a time I would have willingly chosen for myself.

Pregnancy went on…and on…. Promodoral labor had me ready with my bags at the door in the middle of the night on more than one occasion. We considered moving our whole family North in an effort to be together, though the thought of leaving the support of my church and peers was terrifying. So, we grew and waited and wrestled and wondered. And this baby turned and kicked and declared himself in my heart as the ‘Defender’ (his eldest brother is known as the ‘Initiator’ and the Middle One as the ‘Comforter’).

And then, one year ago, J came home and I found myself sitting at that health center, waiting for babe, feeling my body open, listening to “No baby today…maybe tomorrow…”.

But we were living in a season of the unexpected,
and as we open, we are delivered,

      

and as we Wait, there is redemption,

and as we let go, we receive….

It is in our lostness that we are found. 

I drove myself home, greeted my sons and Lover, and forty-minutes later greeted our son on the kitchen floor.
(relive that story here)

Unplanned. Unexpected. Entirely Known.

  

And now, one year later, we know a same-but-different life.

For J, the delivery led to a connection which led to a conversation which ended in a job offer. That job led to relationships and actions which, just last month, led to a permanent position in our own EMS station, working with the same crews and trucks who responded to our home one year earlier.

We still gather on the same kitchen floor, we still wonder and wander and wrestle, we still live within days of unknowns; not with fear, but still with trembling.

 

And this littlest of warriors, who has seen more ambulances than his brothers and invokes smiles and invitations with every lash and laugh, disproves my need for a plan beyond the Greatest Defender, every day.

Filed under Balian, Birth, Family Moments, motherhood, Pieces of Me, seaons · Tagged with Balian, birth story, life lessons, one year