Dear Jonah,

My beautiful baby boy. . .

I returned to work today and now sit in the silence of my office aching for you. Everything about our current proximity feels wrong. My mind, will and emotions are tangled up in you. The last time I sat here, we were one. You kicked and squirmed in my tummy as I anxiously awaited signs of your arrival. Being in this place again seems strangely surreal and a tad bit erroneous, as if I’ve returned to Egypt after glimpsing the Promised Land. Fortunately, this arrangement will only last a week.

Yesterday we celebrated your 3 month birthday. It’s so hard to believe! Time has spun rapidly since your arrival. It’s difficult to picture life without you now. You have quickly become our world, our greatest joy and a source of deep revelation!

The theme of surrender has echoed through each stage of your development thus far. It was evident in our anxiety surrounding the timing of your conception and your growth in the womb, amidst voices of doom during your delivery, in the sensitivities, sickness and sleepless nights subsequent to your birth, while weighing the cost of returning to work. . . the list could go on. Over and over, we have been challenged to relinquish carnal control and abandon all to the sovereignty, provision and goodness of God.

Though we’ve always proclaimed the lordship of God over our lives and circumstance, our journey to you (and with you) has illuminated the reality of our condition- that our confidence has not been in him but in our self-centered agendas and natural abilities. For years we settled into earthly abundance, lacking little, and maintained order and predictability in our lives. We sought God and were willing to make sacrifices for the sake of his call, but we had never experienced a season in our togetherness that required such.

Your essence has challenged all our prior claims pertaining to the character and personality of God. Do we truly believe he is faithful, that he will supply all our needs, that he will be our strength in weakness, our ever-present help in times of trouble. . . Do we believe he has plans to prosper and not to harm us, to give us hope and a future? Do we trust him enough to allow him to lord over our lives?

Though we still wrestle the tendency to search for tangible solutions and sources of comfort and security, we are learning through the events spawned by your life to anchor our souls in eternal truth and confidently cling to divine revelation.

Chills surge through my body as I consider the intent of God in bringing you to us, Jonah. This journey with you was undoubtedly ordained to sanctify our souls!