The other night in the middle of our usual post-dinner, clean up, bath time, bedtime swirl, I heard Adam laughing in the other room. When I peaked through the doorway, he had Isaac stretched out across his lap and his phone in his hand. “Come watch this,” he said, holding out his phone, where comedian Jim Gaffigan was sharing that he and his wife just had baby #4: “If you want to know what it’s like to have a fourth,” he said. “Just imagine you’re drowning… and then someone hands you a baby.” He talked about home birth too, and the reactions he and his wife got when they shared their experience with it. People said, “Oh you had your baby at home! We were gonna do that, but we wanted our baby to live.”
Adam and I have decided it’s a lot better to laugh about our daily chaos than to cry. But to be honest, I’ve cried my share of tears in the past few weeks.
Isaac’s hand is different. It will always be different. And accepting that has been hard. It’s a process and I think it will take time.
I have a lot of questions. I want to know why his hand is different. I want to know if it’s something I did or didn’t do during my pregnancy (everyone says it’s not my fault, but are they just saying that because nothing can be done about it now? Because they can see how fragile I am?). I want to know how Isaac will feel about it when he’s older and whether or not it’ll limit him when it comes to sports or his career. I want to know if kids will make fun of him for it on the playground in a few years and if I’ll be able to stop myself from ripping them apart. I want to know why God chose our Isaac to have a different hand and why He couldn’t teach us these same lessons some other way.
Sometimes I’ll hold Isaac’s hand and think it’s really not that big of a deal. He has two hands and all ten fingers—it’s just that a few of them are smaller than normal. We decided not to point it out to our other kids and so far they haven’t even noticed. Isaac can grip my finger with his little hand and it doesn’t seem to cause him any pain. Sometimes I think everything will be fine, and then I feel guilty for stressing over it when babies are born every day with much more severe issues than Isaac’s.
But other times I’m overcome with emotion. I just don’t want our son to have a different hand.
Since Isaac’s birth I’ve been overwhelmed with how much I can’t control, how much I don’t know. God’s sovereignty continually confronts me and sometimes it’s maddening.
But God has also been comforting me and leading me. Each morning I take a walk, usually with Isaac snuggled against me in his carrier, and God reminds me of my word for 2014: today. When my fears about the future rise up hard and fast, a question immediately pops into my head—is this something I need to deal with today? Today Isaac isn’t trying to ride a bike. Today he’s not playing at the park with strangers. Today he isn’t trying to get a job.
And while questions are still very much a part of my thoughts when it comes to Isaac’s hand, God has recently clarified something for me. My job when it comes to Isaac, for all of my kids really, is to continually reinforce to them one message: you are okay just as God made you.
It’s something Glennon Doyle Melton writes about in her book, which I finished a couple days before Isaac’s birth. “In the end, a child will call the rest of the world liars and believe his mama,” she says. “A child can survive a teacher or other children accidentally suggesting that he’s not okay, as long as when he comes home, he looks at his mama and knows by her face that he really is okay. Because that’s all they’re asking isn’t it? Mama, am I okay?”
I believe the Bible is true, and that each of us can say along with David, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Sometimes the world says something else. The world has a high standard for beauty and success, and acceptance doesn’t always come easily. So I need to continually speak the truth to my children. You were created on purpose to be just the way you are. Who you are at your very core is okay, more than okay, beautiful.
Melton goes on, “Let’s be Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus’s children, Scout and Jem, carefully watch their father’s behavior as the house next door to theirs burns to the ground. As the fire creeps closer and closer to the Finches’ home, Atticus appears so calm that Scout and Jem finally decide that ‘it ain’t time to worry yet.’ We need to be Atticus. Hands in our pockets. Calm. Believing. So that our children will look at us and even with a fire raging in front of them, they’ll say, ‘Huh. Guess it’s not time to worry yet.’”
I’m no Atticus Finch at this point. I am not always steady and sure. But God has pointed me that direction and I am heading that way.
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