It was June 24th when I held a positive pregnancy test in my hand. I was sick at the results. I looked around me, and I was satisfied with my life. At least it made sense to me. I was in college making good grades, I had a nice car, lived in an adorable condo with my best friend as a roommate, I had a great job, and I parented a dog that was the perfect substitute for a child that I wasn’t ready to have. I was living a charmed life for a 20-year-old and that stupid pink line that appeared threatened everything that I loved, everything that I was used to, and everything big that I knew laid ahead of me.
I was terrified. I knew what the repercussions of this would be. I would break my family’s heart. Who what have thought that “sweet Summer” was capable of such a mistake? I would have to drop out of school, the one thing I was good at. I would have to give up my warm yellow room that I’d taken time to paint and make “mine.” I would have to say goodbye to my friends. I was forced to close the book that was my life, and start writing a completely different one. I didn’t know where to go, or what to do. All I knew, Jake, was that I loved you. Your little heartbeat on the monitor, you’re subtle flips and kicks, the personality I knew would one day unfold (and has it ever!) became much more important than what I thought was a good life. In all of the chaos, fear, and uncertainty I understood what it meant to be truly happy. You brought that joy into my life. I actually had something to live for: not a teaching degree, not the “husband and 2.5 kids” I joked about being in my future, not money or intangible things I looked forward to, but an actual little boy in my arms.
When you got sick at 17 days old and I thought I might lose you, I really began loving you. Whatever smidgeon of blame I put on you for snatching my life away from me (because heaven knows it was your fault!), it went away. I can remember walking into the waiting room and looking out the window and staring into the sunlight. I hadn’t seen it or felt its warmth in days. I knew that if I lost you that I would die as well, I wouldn’t have been able to walk out of those hospital doors without you in my arms. I don’t know why God decided to honor my prayers, why He let me keep you. I think it was because saving you saved both of us. Once I understood sacrificial love, I began to understand God’s heart for me. I especially understood what God must have gone though to have given up his son. I almost lost a son. It flashed before my eyes and I bid it away forever upon realizing how selfish I was. How good God was.
I wish their were words to tell you how I feel, but they’re aren’t. A start would be to say that you changed my life, saved my life, that if you do nothing else in this life that I will be your crown in Heaven. I love you with all of my heart, and cannot wait to see the plan that God has for your life. You are so special, and I know God will honor the decision that I made almost 3 years and nine months ago, as I tossed back and forth the decision in my head to keep you or not based upon disappointing my family. The same family who is so head over heels in love with you, I’m ashamed to admit that I was ever afraid of their judgment. They simply adore you. For every bit of hurt I caused anyone by my sin, you have quadrupled it with joy.
Everything I have in this life, my relationship with the Lord, my precious Paul, and sweet Sonora-Grace I have because I made a decision to leave it all behind and choose you. You have been so worth it, and all of this as well. I would do it every day over again. Happy Birthday my “sweet baby Jake.” May you usher thousands into the Kingdom, you are already on your way.
