Keeping These Things In My Heart

I've got to admit that that little leg looks an awful lot like mine.  As inconceivable (get it, inconceivable) as it sounds, it sure looks like mine.  Maybe because this baby is mine.  I can't even describe the total and utter shock I felt at discovering that once again I was carrying a baby.  Just imagine me standing in our room looking at Clint with eyes the size of saucers exclaiming the first thought that came to my reeling mind, "I'm 35!"   For seven years we had believed that we couldn't have any more children.  I had consigned myself to knowing that I would never again feel the movements marking the growth of life within me again, not with bitterness, but looking forward with faith that God knows all and unspeakably grateful for the children I do have.  How could I find reason to complain when I have already been so blessed?!?  There has always been the feeling of someone missing, so I just assumed that adoption was the answer, and that once again God would bring whatever baby into our lives that belongs to us, just like he did with Jackson.  Thyroid surgery not quite two months past, mid-renovation on the building we bought to open the studio, adoption papers in and literally 2 days away from publishing, learning I was pregnant was literally the LAST thing in the world I expected.  How could I thinking it was no longer possible?  Days of walking around in a complete stupor ensued.  Days that turned to weeks and still I could not fathom the possibility.  12 weeks we hear the heartbeat and I cried at the sound I never expected to hear again. And still the shock remained, the surrealness overwhelming.  But amid the daze of those first few months was an incredible pervading sense of absolute wonder that permeated our home.  Telling the kids was unimaginable, especially when they had all three been begging me for a couple of years to have another one even though I kept telling them I couldn't.  Sometimes kids just know things we don't.  I'll never forget as long as I live sitting around the kitchen table that evening after we told them talking about "If it's a girl, what would we name her?, "If it's a boy, what would we name him?"  Leave it to Kail to come up with the most perfect name ever.  In fact, his exact words as he threw his hands up in the air to stop our conversation were, "Wait! Wait!  I've got it!  If it's a boy we should name him Shipper Glunky Blaine.  It's perfect!"  Is it any wonder that after that moment we called the baby nothing but "Shipper" until the ultrasound revealed that they all three got their wish of having a baby sister?  Remarkably we asked the kids not to tell anyone and they didn't.  Not a soul.  We made it five months before anyone besides family and a few very close friends knew a thing.  Even six months in some cases. Clint would've shouted it from the rooftops from day one, but me, I couldn't say a word.  I had the hardest time finding a way to put into words the reason why I just couldn't share it, but I couldn't.  As odd as it sounds, the joy was just too much.   The wonder so thick it was palpable.  I understood on a level I never comprehended before the words in Luke 2:19 where it talks about how Mary "kept all these things and pondered them in her heart".  When you're living part of a miracle talking about it to any and everyone is just too much.  So for those who didn't know, I didn't share our joy as soon as usual not out of selfishness, or out of fear, but out of deep marvel and respect for another literal miracle in my life.  I was simply just keeping all these things and pondering them in my heart. 

(Me and McKinley at six months)