This is something I posted on my personal Facebook account on the day our Lucy turned one. I decided I wanted to put it on here as well, in case it may encourage more people. 🙂 I’d love to hear what you think!
“Today, our Lucy Joy turns one year old. One full, joyful, difficult, amazing, prayer-filled, harder-than-we-ever-thought, perfect year old.
For those of you who may not know, our pregnancy was a surprise. We were not planning to have a baby; I was not ready to have a baby; I did not want a baby. The day I found out I was pregnant, I cried. A lot. And to be perfectly honest with you, not a single one of those tears were happy tears. Mark had just gotten laid off of his job, we had recently moved to a not kid-friendly area, I still had lots of things I wanted to do before becoming a mother; everything was all wrong. After we announced our pregnancy, and all throughout it, well-meaning people would ask us the usual questions: “Are you ready??” “Are you excited???” I would muddle through a reply, and then avoid them until I could go home and cry, because I didn’t know how to answer them. Because I wasn’t. I struggled with anger and depression, on top of all the pregnancy hormones that I did not want to be dealing with. As I page through my journal entries from the beginning of my pregnancy, they are filled with pleas with God to somehow give me love for the child I was carrying, to somehow make me excited about the life I felt no attachment to, and to somehow give me understanding about something that made no sense to me. And you know what? Something miraculous happened.
He did.
It did not happen overnight. It did not even happen quickly, or soon, or in a couple months, or as soon as I felt the first kick. But He did make it happen. Very slowly, a little little bit at a time, as I learned to trust Him that His timing was best, in a way that I’ve never had to before. And on March 26th, 2016, at 3:40 in morning, when that tiny but full life was placed on my chest for the first time, I could honestly say that I loved that little girl in a different, more unconditional way than I have ever loved any other human being, and that was a beautiful, precious answer to many distraught prayers. Today, as I look at our perfect, sweet, sassy little girl, who somehow became her own person within one eensy little year, I am completely overwhelmed and swept under by the love I have for her, and I am so excited that God has chosen me, chosen us, to teach this soul that she is so loved, and that God. Answers. Prayer.
Amen. 
“
