Kiss Your Miracle

Since the beginning of October, life has been a bit chaotic, especially since we’ve been away from home. Space is limited at my Mom’s house here in Michigan, so Adam, Skylar, and I have been sharing one room. At this point we’re fairly used to having Sky sleep near us at night, but at 1am the other morning, something woke her up. And instead of going back to sleep as usual, she jumped to her feet and pitifully reached her arms out to us. We were lying in bed just a few feet away from her, and once she realized we were right there she refused to stop crying. After a while we broke down and took her in the bed with us, but that only excited her; instead of sleeping she started crawling all over us. Back to her bed she went, but now she was more awake than ever.

By 4am we were all exhausted, but morning was still hours away. We were tempted to leave her in her bed to cry it out, but it seemed unfair with my brothers and sisters sleeping in the bedrooms all around us. “Let’s go on the other side of the bed on the floor,” Adam finally said. “She won’t be able to see us there and she’ll probably go back to sleep.” As soon as we crawled onto the floor, Sky got quiet. We lay there completely still for a few minutes, afraid to breathe. We didn’t dare climb back in the bed, but slowly and carefully, we reached up to grab a couple pillows. The comforter though, was a bigger problem. It’s made of down and it’s crinkly, and pulling it off the bed would have made a lot of noise. There was a small blanket in the corner of the room, but it wasn’t big enough for both Adam and me. “You take it,” he said quickly. “Okay… but what are you going to use?” Hanging on the closet door was a damp bath towel. “Really?” I said as Adam pulled it over himself. “You’re going to sleep under a wet towel?” That’s just what he did. We huddled together in a tiny space on the floor next to a beautiful, vacant, king-sized bed.

The next morning when dawn came and Sky was up and ready to start the day, I looked down at my round belly and thought, “Well, I guess Sky is doing her part to get us ready to have a newborn again.” And then I thought about how quickly my life’s theme switched from the emptiness of infertility to the exhaustion of new motherhood. Sometimes being a parent is hard. But when I look at my mom and brothers and sisters, and the way everyone has pulled so tightly together through the difficulty of my dad’s cancer and death, I’m amazed by the simple fact that I get to be part of a family – the family of my childhood, but not just that family. The one I married into as well. And the church family where I belong. And now, the family I have with Adam and Skylar and a new baby on the way.

Families can be messy and irritating and flawed in many ways, but when I stop and try to imagine my life without them, I can’t see them as anything but a blessing. In my experience, raising a family is much more difficult that growing up in one. I get grumpy when I’m tired and feel completely overwhelmed at least once a day. But when I get beyond those temporary things, I remember that God has given me what I always wanted. My life is all about family. Every day I get the opportunity to take some of the blessings passed on to me from my parents and hand them down to my own children. It’s a wonderful way to spend a life, no matter how tiring it gets.