Step One

On Christmas Eve afternoon there were two. They were followed by the soft thud of a diaper clad bottom hitting the floor. This morning there was just one. Tonight there were four. Then one. Then seven or eight.

Merry Christmas. My baby is taking steps.

I wouldn't call it walking. It's certainly more of a glorified falling sort of activity. But it is definitely stepping and he does it with the biggest grin on his face. He shows me his two pearly whites and his eyes light up as if to say, "Look! Look at me! I'm doing it just like the rest of you."

Even though it kills me, even though he has no business stepping at three days shy of ten months old, even though I want to put a brick on his head and remind him that life will wait and growing up is overrated, I can't help but grin right back. That gummy smile is simply infectious, his pride, communicable. I love that tiny boy with the bitty feet and the stutter steps.

And I wonder. How deeply did Mary love? When those ten perfect toes--the ones belonging to the boy who once slept soundly in a manger--started stepping, how intensely did her heart swell? Did it cross her mind that he was all grown up already? Did she see, all at once, the man he would become?

He was the Savior. Sinless. Salvation. But he was born in a barn to a girl whose heart, undoubtedly, soared with love and adoration. He learned to roll and scoot and crawl and step. Then he walked. First, perhaps, into his mother's waiting arms, then on water and, later, straight to the cross without rebelling. Fully God. Fully man.

Once upon a time Mary told someone that Jesus took his first steps. Once upon a time he was simply her son.

Matthew is my son. And he is stepping.