Soren, sweet sweet Soren,

I’ve mentioned this before on this blog, but I become very melancholy on birthday eves. I always was this way on my own birthday eve, but now I have just become that way on yours instead. Daddy was at small group tonight, Joseph was already asleep, and you and I were left to our selves to read. I savored every moment (well, almost every moment – there were a few where you were hemming and hawing around about what to wear to bed, stalling to read “just one more book”, and once you – the little hyper-bumble bee - kicked me while I was changing you into your pajamas…). I digress. The point is, I was savoring you! I was holding back the tears that were just about to leak out of my eyes – like little glasses of soda that someone overfilled just hoping the fizz wouldn’t bubble over. There was a sob stuck somewhere in my throat that was just waiting to come out. Should you have said just one more cute thing, I would’ve spiraled out of control. It would’ve been a cry like Diane Keaton in “Something’s Gotta Give.” I’m often on the edge, darling.

Time out… I just heard a big bang upstairs… I’m back, you were messing around in your room even though it’s supposed to be sleeping-time. Did I mention I’m savoring you???

Tonight is the last night that you are 2. Tomorrow is your third birthday. 3 seems like a kid. 2 seems like a baby. To me, this seems like a big jump. For me, that is. I’m now the mother of a kid! I thought 1 to 2 was a huge jump and friends told me that I should just wait until 2 to 3. I agree – you have gone from a baby to a kid in what seems like no time at all. You are brilliant sweet pea! You are witty, kind, fun, willing to try new things, social. You seem to be a natural leader – always quick to take some little friend’s hand and include them. You are free as a bird – constantly singing and dancing. Though you’ve always loved our arts and crafts times, we recently got rid of our TV which has given you an even stronger desire to create. You entertained yourself for hours today coloring, painting, and reading books. You are expressive and emotional – sometimes this comes out as you have such a deep empathy for the sad characters in your books or you worry if Joseph is crying; other times it means that the knot in your shoelace will unravel you. For better or worse, I see myself in you – and have since you were born – you experience highs and lows to the extreme. Your brother is the stoic. If I did not have another child by which to compare, I would not have realized how much this pendulum of emotion swings for you. I pray God would use it for the good of His kingdom, for the good in your life and in others’ lives. I pray it would be a doorway to your huge heart.

Soren, I have the great privilege of being your mother. You were given to me for this time to raise and I feel great joy and also great responsibility. You are the apple of your daddy’s eye, the pride and joy of your grandparents, the example for your little brother. I want everyone to see that I’m savoring my moments with you, that I’m trying my darndest, that I’m enjoying you. I want them to know so that there is no question that I take this joy and responsibility seriously.

Soren, sometimes things are left unsaid. People just assume that their parents know how appreciated they are, that their children know how cherished they are, that their friends and family know how valued they are. I learned from my family that this assumption is bunk. I’m saying it so it not just be implied. Your daddy is doing the same. If people say we’re serious, sober, and over-analyzers, then they’re right – that’s very much a part of who we are and we accept that. Let it be said that we don’t let these moments to tell you our true feelings pass by without acknowledgement. You are chosen. You are beautiful. I love you, my little angel.

"Suddenly something that was, all at once, pain and longing and adoring had welled up in him, almost choking him. He had wanted to tell someone, but he had no words, inarticulate in the pain and glory..." ~ A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken

Tonight we are enjoying the last night of our vacation. The kids are asleep, the sandy shoes have been shaken out, and the good desserts we've just eaten are giving us the gift of full bellies on which to rest. The condo is being lulled to slumber by the dishwasher and dryer that will return plates to stock cabinets and twenty-five dollar pool towels to tiled bathrooms to await the next visitors ready for resting and relaxing. Tonight as we said our bedtime prayers with our beautiful children, they fell asleep in our arms. It is an incredibly rare thing for this to happen. Soren (a.k.a. Miss Independent) normally asks us to go to our own beds for she wants to sleep. Joseph takes a little more coaxing with bumping (a McLaughlin family rocking-to-sleep tradition), darkness, and quiet. But tonight, we were so long-winded with our prayers of gratitude that they were snoring by our "Amen". The scriptures say (in Psalm 63) that "on my bed I remember You" and, tonight, I most certainly did.

Dear Soren & Joseph,

My hands and my heart are very full. Watching the two of you together has been my greatest joy. This is not to diminish the joy I’ve felt being your daddy’s wife, but, you see, your lives are an extension of that very joy. What a month it’s been since you entered the world Joseph!

Soren, I’m amazed at how naturally you’ve taken on the role as big sister. You are so tender and affectionate. You speak in a high voice saying “it’s okay baby Joseph” at every cry and are quick to get Joseph’s binky, throw away diapers, help me hang and fold clothes, and, in general, just enjoy your little brother. Within moments of coming home, you suddenly seemed bigger and older with my having been made aware again of just how small a new baby is. I have to admit there is some grief in this awareness that time is flying and my baby-Soren is now little-girl-Soren. Coupled with that though is the reality that every season keeps getting better and I enjoy you so immensely.

Joseph, you are a sweet little man and it is with delight that I savor your lovable noises, expressions, and the rolls on your soft skin. So much of my day is spent nursing you, kissing you, holding your tiny feet, and pressing your cheek to mine. I think about my own mother and grown brother and it grieves me to think that there will ever be a day where I could be in the same room with you and have to withhold this kind of affection because you’re an adult. I try my best to relish the moment now and not let that overwhelming fear permeate these days.

These have been the richest days of my life and these have also been days that I’ve had to truly depend on your daddy and on the grace of God. While I want you to know the thrill and deep happiness I’ve had in these days, I also want you to know some of the more difficult moments that lie beside them so that when you enter this season yourself, you know that if you feel there are hard moments, they will never diminish the love you have for your family. I want you to know, with my deep love for you being evidence, that wonderful and tiring moments can co-exist. It seems odd to me that God would allow the first days after a baby is born to be spent sleep-deprived, hormonally-shifting, and question-ridden. It seems like I often wish that I was caught up on rest and my body and emotions were leveled out as to best enjoy these times. I have in my mind that if I really was enjoying you both, I wouldn’t feel like any moments were exhausting. But, is it possible that God would be teaching me in these moments about the complexity of each life He’s created? Perhaps if I had everything figured out, I wouldn’t depend on Him or on the community around me to figure parenthood – and life – out. While I say that I wish this time would slow down so that I could savor the short newborn stage, what better way to do so than to be awakened in the middle of the night in my most fatigued state as the rest of the world sleeps so that I may spend quiet slow-moving moments nursing my infant?

Perhaps God knows best and will continue to give me glimpses of His grace as I trust Him. Perhaps instead of feeling guilt-ridden when I feel that a moment is difficult, I could open my mind and heart to the possibility that therein lies part of God's design - relying on Him, on my husband, on my community. Perhaps, parenthood requires so much vulnerability that without these tension-filled thoughts and emotions, I would miss part of the gift. I want you to know that if you wonder these things someday, it's okay. And it's okay not because everybody else feels them, but because, I believe, it's God's way of teaching you early on in the life of your children that you need Him.

(Joseph Winslette McLaughlin born Dec 21, 2009 @ 5:26pm; 8 lbs 14 oz and 20 1/2 in long; pic @ 1 week old - 9 lbs 11 oz!!!)

I was privileged with Joseph to have a natural birth again. Believe me, during the day this time around, there were more times than not I would have chosen a word other than “privileged”. I had to look at the bracelet I was wearing during the day over and over – “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). I’ve come to believe even in a week’s time with Joseph that his attitude during his entrance into the world is much like his personality – even-keeled, laidback, and wanting to know what the big hurry is. He is content to snuggle (and nurse) all the time. Oh, how I love and adore this little man already.

I recently read a beautiful article from The National Catholic Weekly. It moved me so very deeply as one article focused on a meditation on birth and the spiritual life.* When referring to birth, the author writes “…it does not allow diversions; it is more glorious and messy, more trying and transformative than a person might suspect. Basically, it is a lot like prayer.” She goes on later to write that “one reason that few people take seriously the physical reality of giving birth as a teaching ground for receiving grace is that sanitized hospital births, with epidurals at the ready, change the experience of giving birth from a gift received to an event managed.” Yes, I realize that’s a very strong statement, but one I’ve come to believe myself. (And, as she points out, women must tell their own stories – especially when it comes to complicated or tragic ends.) While pain brings discomfort and fear, I think my greater fear was always missing the opportunity to feel this amazing rite of passage. To be fully immersed in the moment that my children entered the world. To understand what it is that women all over the world and through the ages have experienced. To think of it as something to “get through” instead of something in which to deeply plunge scared me. Natural birth required the greatest of me – trust, surrender, and awareness in full. “How different it would be if we saw childbirth as something to receive, rather than something to soldier through” she wrote.

Psalm 139:13-15 (NIV) says “For you created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.”

I’m no bible scholar, but I do love to read up on the back-story on passages. It’s amazing to find out that the phrase “wonderfully made” is actually defined as “to be beyond one’s power” and “to be difficult to understand” meaning that we are made with so much complexity and extraordinary detail that only God could truly know us. Also, when the passage refers to our “frame”, it’s referring to our “power, bones, and might” – our entire being. And the “secret place” to which the passage refers is defined as somewhere mystical and deep within the earth. I’m moved by these thoughts of sweet little Joseph being knit together within me, so complex that even I cannot comprehend him, and so divinely put together that it’s more mysterious than the center of the earth.

The choice to have a natural birth – and God’s gift that there were no complications requiring me to choose/have otherwise, I believe, allowed me to enter into the sacred process of attaching to my beautiful children. I do believe that childbirth is as the author writes “a transformative experience, the edge of life and death, the play of wind and breath, the shock of pain and joy. It is where a woman is given a new gift: a new relationship with God, her husband and their child – practice in receiving grace.”

* Excerpts from “A Fiery Gift” by Susan Windley-Daoust