Happy December! 

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Especially for my family and I, as we just welcomed our daughter, Elliana (“God has answered”) Arwen (“noble maiden”) into the world.

If you’ve followed my emails and/or blog for a while, you may know that, beginning in October of 2020, I had four consecutive miscarriages: the second was January 2021; the third April 2021; and the fourth just after Christmas last year. Despite the often paralyzing pain of grief, Ben and I both harbored an unexplainable confidence that the Lord had a second child for us, and that His timing and purposes, as mysterious as they can be, were absolutely perfect.

I plan to write at length about Elliana’s birth story, and the multitude of answered prayers revolving around my pregnancy with her and my delivery experience, but for now, I’m beginning with a poem, which I pray you’ll find to be a reminder of God’s love for us, and His matchless power over every evil and affliction of this world.

Long-held secrets of your coming thrummed inside our hearts.
Twenty-five months of waiting.
Twenty-five months of a pain
Whose drumbeat has not ceased,
But been dampened by the golden notes
Of manifest hopes rejoicing,
Of answered prayers resounding
As we watch our baby sleep.

I felt the first flutters of your existence,
Watched you wriggle wild within me,
Moaned deeply through the waves of your approach,
Roared you into the water.
And even when my eyes beheld
Your thick dark head of hair,
My heart could only whisper,
“My secret love is here.”

Grief, that jealous ghost,
Tried mightily to steal this.
Its howls tore through the hallways of my heart,
Its shadow swallowed all the sunlight while it filtered through small windows.
Its chill hung unrelentingly,
Sending shivers when we smiled.

But it could not survive,
Had no chance against the Ghost for whom
Death is powerless,
The grave piteous,
And the Way – the Life – the Victor
For those with eyes to see.

And now you’re here,
A little life,
A giant gift,
A reminder every moment of the
Love that sets us free.

Twenty-five months of waiting,
Of pain.
Of hope.
Of wonder.
A lifetime of love indestructible.