A Thank You Note to My Unborn Child

Little One, you aren’t even here yet, but I just wanted to take a time-out tonight as I round the 27 week mark (and keep getting rounder) to tell you, “thank you.” God has always used the littlest ones—the weak and frail—to open eyes the eyes of the strong. You are so small; not even 2 pounds, but the weight of glory you reveal is astonishing. You do not yet know that you are a catalyst of wonder in my life, a catalyst of worship. With your kicks, somersaults, and barrel rolls you constantly nudge me deeper into the heart of wonder, deeper into the heart of God.

It won’t be long before you will be here. And you will soon see that when you are young the whole world is a marvelous discovery—“Look mama, look! The moon!” or “Look, mama, look—a ladybug!” But when you get older, sometimes it gets hard to see the world with new eyes. All you see are the thorns and thistles, the smudge and the smear. And as strange as it may sound, you forget to marvel at the moon or stand amazed at the dainty flittering of a bug’s wings. You forget that the whole world is “charged with the grandeur of God,” aflame with His beauty, oozing with His wisdom, alive with His fierce power. And when you fail to marvel, it’s not long before you find your heart growing cold and ungrateful.

But you, my precious unborn child, how you lead me back to the heart of wonder, back to the heart of praise. You see, with your every nudge I’m reminded of something so strange and marvelous, I can’t help but worship. This is it: God is at work forming a life—a human being—inside of me. I’ve been chosen to be a vessel to a miracle. You are that miracle.

At just over two weeks, your tiny heart began to beat. It was a spontaneous mystery—the kind that is still baffling scientists—how within a poppy-seed sized embryo, a cell spontaneously jolts awake and begins to beat and how the other cells nearby join in the dance of its rhythm. I like to think of God hovering over you then, the way He did at the very beginning when He brought the first life miracle. I like to think of the Trinity’s overflowing joy flowing down into that single primordial heart cell with such joy that it just can’t help but dance and teach the other cells to dance too. I pray that your life would be like that first beat, a spontaneous overflow of  God’s joy that can’t help but affect everyone else around you.

I stand amazed at how from a microscopic twisted spiral of DNA, you are becoming you, unfolding and unfurling inside me with each passing day. Your fingers budded, and then your toes, your nails, and your eyelashes. And somehow from this twisting staircase of God’s words for your life, you are coming to be. Already, the experts say, you can suck your thumb, dream, grimace, taste, and hear. You spend your days adding brain cells at a dizzying rate and practicing for your first breaths. All the while, you are taking my breath away. Every nerve and sinew, every twitch and tendon is an astonishing mystery.

But still—all of that is merely matter. Beyond the wonder of flesh and bone, the wonder yes, of being flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone, is the miracle of your soul.

You, Little One, possess an eternal soul. I don’t even understand the words, but there is something in you, something that will not perish. Though your body will fade, your soul will remain. You are a person, made in the very image of God, distinct from me and accountable to Him. I tremble at the weight of this glory and at the weight of the responsibility of shepherding you.

But for now, I just marvel. You lead me to worship because you are doing the very thing you were made to do—you are reflecting the image and mystery of God. What a vast, creative, generous, wise God! What a kindness that He would allow you into my life! What a joy it is to carry you!

Thank you, Little Glorious One, you are a catalyst to praise. May you always be so, all your days.