Days of Joy

Sometimes beauty surprises us.

As life spins around us, thick with frustrations and waiting and disappointments and slippery ice and burned toast and rusty-brown well water that turns laundry orange, every now and then we catch our breath. In amazement, delight. A skipped heartbeat of "can this be real?"

And that's where I am today. Caught by surprise, like a sky full of snow-clad branches surprisingly diamond-bright against a coal-blue sky.

God's mysteries wrapped up like a Christmas gift, glittering in the shadows.

My post will be short today because my heart is full. 

After all these years, we welcome home our second little one - named Seth after the consolation gift of a son God sent to Adam and Eve - and can hardly contain our delight. Even with C-section stitches, a stretched-out belly, pain medication, sleepless nights, migraines, and fumbling for bottles in the middle of the night, the wonder still stays, frost-like, sparkling in a thousand winter colors.

God has heard our prayer and answered, and we are speechless with gratitude.

As if one little child wasn't enough - more than enough - beautiful, precious, praise-worthy enough - He has blessed us with two.

Sometimes just when we think we have life all figured out, God throws us a curve ball.

A curve ball  with blue eyes and blond-thin eyebrows and succulent rosy cheeks. A curve ball that smells of baby powder and has ten perfect pink toes. My mind is clogged with warm fleece sleep suits and baby socks and tiny newborn diapers. I cannot write my newest novel ideas; I cannot remember a before or imagine an after. I would forget to eat if it wasn't for my exhausted, depleted stomach screaming after sleepless nights of feedings and diaperings.

I cannot think in poetry - the world explodes in it instead, falling around me like snowflakes.

If you've ever been surprised by God's mercies to the undeserving, you will know how I feel at this moment - as the new year rings in silently around me.

I have not even noticed.

I'm too busy whispering a fervent prayer of unbelieving thanks.