Joy to the World

I remember walking into our living room, hands shaking, holding that stick, the white stick with the pink double lines, and feeling such relief. We had been trying, without success, to get pregnant for almost 2 years, and after months of anguished prayers, negotiations with God, and desperate sleepless nights spent googling "infertility/increasing fertility/reasons for infertility/boxers vs. briefs and infertility/infertility and diet," I was going to be a mom, we were going to be parents. No longer just a couple, but a family.

And then there was the ultrasound, in one of those "Pay to Find out the Gender of your Child and Take Home a Video" clinics. I was home in Iowa that Summer, without Ferdie, but I couldn't wait to see our baby on screen, to know if we were having a son or a daughter.  I called Ferdie from the parking lot, the overseas connection crackling and breaking up. "It's a girl! It's a girl!" He cried on the other end of the line.

And her name would be Soliana Grace, that I knew for sure.  Soliana for sunshine, for the island that brought her parents together, for her Lola, Soledad, in the Phillipines.  And Grace. Her existence was God's grace, God's gift in our lives.

And on the long flight back to Saipan, somewhere between Minneapolis and Tokyo, she fluttered in my stomach, and I sat in my cramped seat on that crowded plane, with that secret all my own. And it was the first thing I told Ferdie when I landed. I felt her! I felt her move! Her little limbs reaching and stretching, noticeable only to me.

I loved her already.

And then the day she was born. That Monday morning, after the being afraid and the what ifs, after the Fijian midwives laid hands on my belly, prayed for my baby's entrance into the world, after the sweet relief of that 3rd and final push, there she was, skinny and long and pink and perfect.  I held her warm body to my chest, my lips on her squishy forehead, and felt joy beyond joy. This was my baby girl, flesh of my flesh, bone of my bones.

And then those December nights, feeding Soli by the light of the Christmas tree, rocking her, tracing the contours of that sweet face, memorizing the curve of her brow, the flutter of eyelids, that squishy forehead. 

Silent Night.
Peace on Earth.
Joy to the World.

The words took on new meaning, a fullness, a sweetness that December.

And tonight, on the eve of Soli's 7th birthday, I revel in her.  I revel in the gift God gave us, at the daughter with the sweet, sensitive spirit, and the intuitive nature and the creative mind.  I revel in love manifest, in God's grace in our lives.

And I sing with Mary.

"My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. . ."