We only have a couple months to go until you make your grand appearance baby, and we’re thinking all the time about who you are and how our lives will change (and doing a horrible job of regular blogging). Somedays I wonder if we have what it takes to do justice to such a high calling, to love a fresh person in a way that holds on tight and sets free all at the same time. I think about who your daddy and I are and what that means for you and the ways that you will be like us and the ways we will never understand you.
The world speaks in colors and the dancing of light and shadow and textures to your momma but somedays the colors bleed angry and the movement is too much and the way the fingers feel seems ready to devour. And baby, your daddy has a mind brilliant for numbers and patterns and the way all the working parts come together to make a whole but sometimes those patterns won’t let him go and the thoughts and the numbers and the way the world works sets itself on repeat in his brain and he can’t shut it off. We have been blessed and we have been broken by the brains God gave us and the truth is baby, it’s likely to be the same for you. Statistics aren’t prophets and there’s a world of possibilities but we’re not going to hide for a fear filled second behind ignorance.
So Emerson, if when you’re stretching big into the person you’ll be you find yourself hiding in a corner to escape the way a room full of people makes you feel or if we need to change your shirt for the fifth time that morning because the color red wants to eat you or you can’t see straight because of the way the collar feels on your neck… We’re not going to love you any less. And if the cracks in the sidewalk can’t be stepped on or your spoon can’t touch your fork and your right shoe has to go on before the left… We will take a deep breath and talk you through it. Because Emmy baby, we get it. It’s not going to be about getting what you want because our strongest desire is to raise you to know grace and humility and to see you own it for your own struggle. We’re going to ask you to try tough things once and then again and do whatever it takes to help you find your own successes and learn how to do things you don’t want to and know your own limits. And we’re not going to shy away from all the wonderful ways that people find help, in books and medicine and counselors, in prayers and deep breaths and safe places.
You will teach us new ways to see the world and the best ways to tackle this life and whatever it throws at us. Because Emmy, you’re brilliant in ways we don’t even know. The same statistics that speak on the ways your brain will fight you speak boldly of the ways that it will work for you. The way the colors and numbers will dance for you baby.
So rest for a little while longer (and please, my ribs could really use a break from your gorgeous leg muscles). There’s plenty to learn and mountains to scale when you get out here.
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