Truly a Gift

Recently my mind has been overrun with so many thoughts that it has taken me the better part of this month to sift through them and write a decent post. Perhaps it is from holding my newborn nephew only moments after his little heart began to beat outside of his mother, and watching his infant soul find expression in a tiny face whose eyes were seeing this world for the first time.

Or perhaps, it is the lingering reality of a choice; a choice which paints such a dramatic contrast between the life of this welcomed child and the life of so many welcomed into heaven before birth.

Possibly it is my heightened sensitivity to the negative comments and judgmental glares increasingly suffered by my children at the grocery store, not by their own actions, but rather, their mere existence, fore in the eyes of many, there is something increasingly wrong with a large family. But the concern is not in the comments and stares, rather, in knowing that someday my children will understand the meaning of the attention we are given. Someday they will wonder why they and their siblings are reduced to budgets, balances and carbon footprints.

I pray they will continue to see each other as they do now, as a gift in the truest sense of the word. Their lives were given to us not because of some merit of our own, nor because we are bound by some contract to do what is right by these new lives. It is truly ours, given from our Creator, to respect or abuse as we choose. We can neither determine this life's existence nor its departure, only the hope and circumstances for both. I hope they will see each other as a gift, a gift we have been given to open anew with each encounter, to discover with the removal of each layer of tissue paper that there is an even more intimate image of our Lord, buried deep within every gift of life.