[Extra]Ordinary Loves

I feel like a school girl sometimes because I just totally miss my hubby while he is away at work during the day. He’s gone from just a little after 6am until a little before 6pm, and most of the time it’s only M-F.

But seriously? I spend the mornings just eagerly waiting for him to call around noon. And then I spend the afternoons anticipating him coming home and wrapping me up in a big snuggly hug when he gets home for dinner. I send him little email snippets during the days sometimes just to let him know how much he’s on my mind and how much I love him, and often times it takes some serious self-control not to just flood his inbox with love notes all day (because I think he would not appreciate that, LOL).

It’s not like I pine away all day, unable to accomplish my own work from missing him, of course. Just a desperate love for him, and a feeling of incompleteness while he’s away. I’m SO proud of the work he does, and the success the Lord gives him while he works each day. But it’s that idea of “distance makes the heart grow fonder” because even just the day hours where he is gone, my heart can’t wait to have him back with me for the evening and night hours.

I love my man & can’t believe God blessed my life with him.

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Three of the children who bear our image are frollicking around in the front yard at the moment. Bikes and Nerf and rubber boots. Sidewalk chalk covering the legs of my toddling daughter. Children who delight in everything from chasing wild turkeys off the grass to taking communion in faith at Sunday worship. Children with joy & love for one another ~ have I mentioned how the boys call their sister, “sweetie” more often than not?! Children who love their freedom yet long for responsibilities. Children who follow in our footsteps yet still pave their own ways. Children who are so alike yet so unique.
Children who I had thought, not so very long ago, would not have been mine to raise on this earth.
Children whose lives could so easily be taken for granted, but whose lives are positively miraculous in the sense that they survived my womb while nine of their siblings didn’t. These are children who should be on billboards for the pro-life movement. Not because they survived abortion, but because they simply survived.

I would have loved them with every thread of my being even if I did not scale mountains to have them. But because I did, I love and appreciate them just that much more.
They have siblings who I have held in the palm of my hand… and I can’t tell you the utter delight it gives me that God has given me at least these three whose hands are daily held & squeezed in that same palm.

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And then there’s my littlest love, currently hiccuping underneath the stretchy skin of my belly. I am just sitting here, amazed that I am still pregnant. It’s beyond incredible.

My little Heritage would have been a year old this week… my Fidelis would have been eight months…
A year ago we thought the door to growing our family again had been closed forever due to my immune health problems.

But here I am. Over 24 weeks pregnant with a healthy, active little boy.

This pregnancy has not been without its complications, and it has been full of anxiety. It’s anything but ordinary: it’s miraculous.
The fact that I’m pregnant today just blows my mind… God’s mercy toward me with the life of this tiny son just overwhelms me with amazement.
I love this little boy so much! A huge part of me just can’t wait to be done being pregnant so I can start looking at him, touching his hands, kissing his cheeks, nursing him, babywearing him, watching his siblings adore him, stare at him fall asleep on his daddy’s chest. But then there is this other part of me that knows this season will pass all too quickly, and it will be gone forever. Never again will I feel jabs and rolls and hiccups from the inside. Never again will this ball-like belly be my profile when I see my shadow on the pavement. Never again will my reflection fill out my maternity clothes. So I don’t wish it away. I drink it in. I love it to pieces.