I’m a little ashamed to admit that I’m not the most emotional woman. Maybe it’s a coping skill I learned to help me survive our five years as houseparents in a boys’ home or maybe it started even earlier as a response to having a mother with a definite flair for the dramatic. All I know is that it takes a lot to make me cry, but Josh managed to do just that.
It all started as we were doing some organizing down in the basement. Josh saw the tower of storage tubs and asked me, “Mommy, what are all those?” I told him, “Those are tubs of the clothes you’ve outgrown. We save them so Danny can wear them and when he outgrows them, they will go to your new baby brother.” Josh thought about that and asked, “And then they will go to another new baby? A new one in your tummy?” I was a little taken aback by that question. I said “. . . Well. . . we might have more foster babies, but there probably won’t be any new babies in my tummy. We went to doctors who said they didn’t think we could have any babies in my tummy. This one was a big surprise, just like when you talked about Abraham and Sarah and Isaac in your Sunday School class.” Josh looked at me seriously and said, “Mommy, I don’t think those doctors knew that God was here.”
And this is when a normally stoic mommy cries. Just a little. Josh is so right that for the rest of our lives, this baby will be a sign to our family that God was here. That God IS here. It is beautiful to me that when my children are tempted to doubt God or find God asking big things of them, they will be able to remember a time when a miracle happened in our own home. While ours may be a particularly vivid example, I think all families can think of a time when God has shown up in your home and it’s so important that we verbalize those moments for our kids to help grow their faith. You never known when they will tell that story back to you in your moment of doubt. And you may find yourself crying, too. Just a little.