Hey Kid: Five

April 1

Hey Kid,

I have a spending problem. And, I mean, it's totally your fault. See, I've rediscovered a major discrepancy between baby boy clothes and baby girl clothes. Namely, baby girl clothes take up 75% of the floor while baby boy clothes are relegated to the corner and consist of trucks, dinosaurs and puppies. Don't get me wrong, you're totally going to wear some of the aforementioned, I just don't want you getting the idea that you can only be a trucker, a paleontologist or a veterinarian.You, my son, can be anything you want to be. So when I see something irrationally cute, something in a different career path than the above mentioned monopoly of three, I pick it up.  You, can be...a turtle farmer?

 Or...you can run a rehabilitation center for wounded foxes.

You can be a park ranger or trail guide or thrill seeker. (As long as your thrill of choice is unlikely to kill you because I'm not okay with that.)

You can be an animator (or you can keep me up at night being a complicated little dragon, whichever way you're interpreting this onesie is fine by me).

And you can definitely be the Little Brother.

You have outfits and sleepers and blankets and diapers and wipes and formula and bottles. See, like I said, I have a major spending problem. It's like I somehow think that the more I spend, the quicker you'll get here. It's ridiculous logic. In actuality what's happening is my bank account is shrinking as you're growing. But what am I supposed to do? Force you to go everywhere in just a diaper? Hardly.

You have your very own dot blanket.

This is important. Your oldest brother loved loves his all blue dot blanket so much that, years ago, we bought a backup because we were just sure we'd leave it in some hotel on a road trip and the world would end with his wailing. Matthew has a blue and white dot blanket that he loves (less than Garrett loves his but still) a lot. We'd bought Kate a pink dot blanket just before we found out that she'd gone straight to Heaven without having to first pass through earth. So I was adamant that you needed your very own dot blanket. I finally found this one. I did a happy dance in the store and I'm sure the person watching the security camera was very impressed with my jig.

We've got the lawyers and the social worker involved. We've done all of our background checks and, good news, we're not child abusers in this state or any other and neither of us has a record! You'll be in good hands, kiddo. We're meeting with our social worker soon to update our home study and then we'll be ready--legally. We're already ready in every other way.

Ten weeks. It still seems like forever. It's still more than 14 million fetal heartbeats. I still worry myself sick. I still find myself handing my fear over to the Lord on a daily basis. I pray that you are physically, emotionally, and mentally strong. I pray that you are developing exactly as you should. I pray that everything continues to go well. And...I hope.

When I sat in the private room at the funeral home and sobbed, alone, with your sister in my arms, I believe that God spoke to me. It is alright to grieve and hope. That simple sentence became the springboard for a conversation I had with your dad a few nights later. "If we ever have another daughter, I want to name her Hope." God had spoken something similar to him and we settled on it then and there, in the heartache and devastation of your sister's loss. Another daughter would be named Hope. 

We're not going to saddle you with that, kid. 

And every boy name that means "hope" is pretty much awful so we're not going to do that to you either. I realized that by giving us a name for a hypothetical daughter, God essentially equipped us to be able to move out of our grief and into a place of hope. It wasn't necessarily a name He was giving us, but the very virtue we needed to cling to as we waited to know about you. And the virtue we still clutch as we wait to hold you in our arms.

I could never have imagined this journey. From the moment, years ago, that I believe I heard the Lord tell me that I would have a daughter one day, to losing that daughter, to finding a son I never knew I was waiting for. My whole adult life has been about letting go of the plans I thought I had and submitting myself to the amazing plans God has for my life.

"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

This is all about hope. Yes. Indeed. And it is about the Lord's will being done in our lives.

And that is why we are going to name you William. And call you Will.

Love,

Mama


*It should be noted that all of these outfits were returned during the week and a half that we thought we were not going to get to have the joy of raising Will. But Troy went back out and bought the fox outfit and my sister-in-law picked back up the turtle one. I really miss the Night Fury outfit.