Tip of My Iceberg

My son, Mark, was raised with five sisters. Five girls telling him what to do. Five girls emoting around him and in his face most days of the month.

Early Sunday morning, he and his wife, Jillian, were blessed with their first child. A son.

You can’t help but grin about a divine statement like that.

God remembered Mark.

Huck Ryan Rogers came into the world quickly. Which makes a ton of sense to me. Jillian is a marathon runner. She ran the day she went into labor.

Huck was in a hurry to get out.

He’s added a dimension to Mark and Jillian’s lives that is unique. A huge blessing and an even bigger challenge.

He’s made them parents.

There’s something incredibly beautiful about seeing your child hold his own child. Seeing him not only as an adult but as a husband and father. A dad who will love and care for his child. In much the same way we have loved and cared for him and his sisters.

When I think of what it was like for me being a first-time parent, I remember the nervousness. The anxiousness. The fear that I would somehow break my child because I’d not held many babies before then. The absolute certainty that I wouldn’t know how to take care of a child properly. The conviction that I would somehow permanently screw up any child I was given to raise.

It’s amazing what a few years and some hands-on experience can do for perspective.

I’m excited about Mark and Jillian being parents. About how they’ll handle the challenge of raising a son. How they’ll deal with the unexpected and unasked for issues that happen with all babies. Babies who aren’t predictable. Who certainly have no problem doing what you aren’t prepared to handle.

These two new parents will do just fine.

How can I be so sure? They’ve both been greatly loved and valued as children and now as adults. They’ve been known. They will give from full hearts what’s been given them.

We’ve all begun the same way. Coming into the world as tiny, needy babies. With different stories, varied backgrounds. All with the same needs. To be loved, known, celebrated and made to feel special and valued.

God does that for each of us. Loving us with abandon. Offering us hope in Him. Knowing us even when we choose not to know Him.

“Thank You for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous–how well I know it…How precious are Your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand!”   Psalm 139:14, 17, 18

Huck will know he’s loved. He has parents who will shower him with their appreciation for his presence in their lives.

God celebrates me with just that kind of appreciation. Because I’m His.

That makes me special. And loved.

Makes me feel like a kid again.