Overwhelmed by Blessing, Part II

I decided to take a test, wishing I'd bought stock in EPT.  Ever since that first great shock, all fatigue, headaches, stomachaches, hunger pangs, strange dreams and irritability could only mean one thing.  Nevermind that I'd gotten an IUD so that we wouldn't be surprised again, I continued to take pregnancy tests with great regularity.

My logic kicked in right after taking the test, and I immediately felt better.  There was no way we were pregnant.  Those devices have the highest success rating of any birth control out there.

The baby was crying from her crib and needed to be dressed for church.  I walked into her room to find her little fat face red and mad at me for my delay.  I then had the gall to put her on the changing table, and she really let me know how she appreciated it. 

I wrestled a clean diaper on her and was buttoning the buttons on the bottom of her smocked romper when I checked the test for confirmation that we were still a two-baby family.  And again, almost mocking me, was the word.

"Pregnant."

"Honey!  We have a problem!" I yelled to him two rooms away.

The next half hour is a blur.  We must have dressed the other daughter, a baby herself, and gotten everyone in the car, because we somehow ended up at church that morning.   All I remember is sitting in the sanctuary next to friends of ours and crying so visibly that my husband felt compelled to whisper to them that everything was ok.

The room spun around me and visions of day care bills danced in my head.  Here I was again, sitting in a church asking God what He was thinking.

But this time was different somehow.

Much was the same.  I was concerned about finances, about sanity, about another pregnancy.  I was stressed out about telling my boss.  I felt sure my mind and body might not recover from a third baby (my third, as it turns out, within 33 months of my first). 

But as I sat in the sanctuary and as I grappled with my conflicting emotions in the days that followed, peace was ever-present.  Having watched God provide for our family, having leaned hard on grace to parent two babies at one time while working fulltime, I was certain.  Certain that He was real, that He was there, and that He was the Giver of this Life.

I joked in the months that followed that this baby, with his IUD-defying birth, must be the next Billy Graham.  But the joke, in part, is true--this baby, like all babies, was created by the Creator, and with a purpose.  He wasn't my idea.  He wasn't my creation.  He was--and is--God's idea and His design.  And proof that God knows better than I do.  (As if you needed proof.  But sometimes I need a reminder.)