It will happen any day.  Maybe tonight.  Maybe tomorrow.  Maybe next week.  Our life is about to change forever–we will be meeting our son in a matter of hours or days.  I didn’t remember how surreal it feels to be in the last days of pregnancy.

The minute-by-minute goals of my life for the last couple of weeks has been keeping the house mildly clean and getting enough rest.  I am so tired of trying to stay in a constant state of readiness–and keeping the rest of my family in this state as well.  Paloma’s fascination with cutting paper into thousands of little bits has been one of the greatest tests of my character.  Kells’s determination to de-and-re-construct every puzzle we own at once has been revealing of the depths of my patience.  Rosie’s unbridled imagination and zeal for making impossible things out of scraps of wood, cardboard, glue, scissors, and rope has been a challenge to encourage and direct…  Randy’s explanations of his complicated pedals and electric guitar gear goes in one ear and out the other.

I feel like I am on another planet.

The world is going on.  The kids have the same needs they always have.  Everybody still needs to eat three meals a day–the planning and preparation of which is the greatest creative achievement of my daily life.  The days seem to stretch out in this endless sea of hours that need to be filled with healthy experiences for the children, while I am just trying to keep the basics going around here.

Today, I took a nap while Kells napped.  When I woke up, I laid there thinking about all the times in the last nine months I had slept on that couch.  The first three months were so intense–I tried to sleep as often as possible to hide from the morning/afternoon/evening sickness.  That seems like such a long time ago.  Now these last three months, my body growing to a size beyond belief…  All the end-of-pregnancy things that happen…  I can’t believe it.  I’m at the foot of the mountain again, looking up at what can seem an impossible journey to make.  But it will be over so soon.  And we will have our son at last.

Pregnancy and birth are truly the greatest acts of love that I have ever lived out.  There is so much “dying to the flesh” involved in becoming a parent.  And it really does start with pregnancy.  Only the truest, most sincere love I have ever experienced could cause me to go to these lengths to have children.  And compared to many women I know, I have had it easy.

On this side of Remy’s birth, I wonder what lesson the Lord is going to teach me through his coming into the world.  There has never been a time in my life where I have depended so much on God and felt his presence so strongly than in the births of my children.  I am looking forward to being on the other side of it–to writing the story of his birth.  I am looking forward to the deep peace and great joy of coming through a long journey and having a new little person to share the love that is in our family.

It will happen so soon.  Maybe tonight.  Maybe tomorrow.  Maybe next week.

It won’t be long now.

This is a song I wrote for Rosie, our first child, just before she was born in December of 2007. I recorded it right before the birth of Paloma, our second.

Rosie’s Song

We bought this house four seasons ago
We didnt know the grass wouldnt grow
But in my body blooms a flower
A single solitary rose
The secret burning
A quiet turning
Her color yearning to show

The early light, the soft winter snow
The quiet rooms where we come and go
But in the house a song is stirring
A perfect unsung melody
And we are rearranging
The world is changing
A child wakes me to sing

We have walked through leaves of gold
We have seen the days of evergreen
When I kiss your quiet face
The first bird of the morning will sing

I love you so, though Ive never seen your face I know
That theres never been another little life
So sweet and bright
A secret only God has known
The music of your laughter
Forever after
Will fill my heart with your song