From my heart to yours

Allsort, bump, baby, whatever we call you, I have been thinking a lot about you this week, I'll be honest because I am desperate to meet you, I'm not sure I have room to keep you inside much longer, but mainly I am desperate to meet you because it feels so long since I have been dreaming about what you would be like.

Of course, I have been waiting 9 months for you, from the very minute I found out I was pregnant, in Bruge of all places, with your daddy so far away, I have been thinking about whether you'll have my nose or his eyes and whether you will be super clever like your Dad or incredibly eccentric like your Mum.

In fact though, I have been dreaming about you for even longer than that.  Maybe when your older you will know something more of all the struggles I have had with my health, but suffice to say that up until a few years ago your Mummy was not very well and that as much as she wanted you it was not to be.  Your Daddy and I even tried to make it happen for a while, but we are (with hindsight) grateful that God didn't let it happen then, it is much better for it to happen now, now that your Mummy can actually look after herself, as well as you.

Even once you are older there wouldn't be any particular need to tell you about how ill Mummy was and how it stopped her living her dream of having you in her early twenties, but her story speaks of the grace of God so deeply that we will almost certainly tell you, because your Mummy's life as well as your own are such gifts from God, and in case that gets lost in me being sentimental about my own journey, little Allsort, please know, you are such a gift from God.  We thank our lucky stars that you are going to be in our lives, sometimes I pinch myself, I can't believe it is true, then I look down at my big bulging tummy and I know it is.

You were promised to us, God promised to give us a child, although I thought it might never happen, I never let myself believe too much that you would come because I wanted you so much and couldn't cope with the disappointment if you didn't.  God knew, though, that I was destined to be a mother and that your Daddy was to be a father, and He knew He would always come through.  Even before I took that test, even before the lines came up in those little windows God was trying to help me in my disbelief.  God told someone I was in Belgium with, in a roundabout way, that I was pregnant, before I could even know, He was there knitting you altogether.  The words of Psalm 139 have brought a tear to my eye ever since I found out you were in me

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

Little baby, God has seen your face, and I am sure you are beautiful, so why not come out and let the rest of us have a look too!!