Small Beginnings

Life these days is measured not so much in dates or days, but weeks. Every week brings prosaic tasks and ordinary living, and in those tasks and living I find new awe, for each week also brings new milestones for the baby and I and brings Joel and I closer to the day when we can meet our baby and hold him* and love on him. This week, he has grown to the size of a peach, which is adorable. I am told that my morning sickness should begin to dissipate (would someone please alert my stomach?). We're creeping through a baby name book (there is no short list of favored names yet; all we have is a very long list of mostly girls' names since we have yet to reach the boys' name section); I'm adding to my maternity clothing stash (thanks in large part to Mama!); and I've read enough on baby feeding, umbilical cord clamping, and labor and delivery to know that I have a huge amount to learn in the next six months. It's a happy task!

Joel and I have also been taking advantage of the quietness of DC in the winter to visit museums (Smithsonian Postal Museum was excellent!) and monuments (we're partial to the Lincoln Memorial, since it was the location of our engagement almost two years ago). Truly, "the world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder {G.K. Chesterton}."

Snow has been a regular occurrence of late, and three beautiful inches currently cover the ground outside. I've been highly tempted to go build a snowman!

This city continues to entrance me with its 250 year old buildings and adorable tea shops. Exploring is always an adventure, and while I've gotten pretty good at walking anywhere within a 3 mile radius, please don't ask me to navigate the multitude of one-way streets by car!

I'm looking forward to teaching music again--I've missed teaching and my dear students so much! So it is with great delight that I'm taking on three siblings from a sweet family at church.

Small beginnings, these. And yet God is so faithful to grow them. He grew a childish admiration into a marriage more wonderful than I could have imagined--and which long-married couples tell me will only grow better. He is growing me to rely upon Him in a place so far from where I called "home" for the first 24 years of my life and so removed from everything comfortable and familiar. Yet He is also growing my friends, activities, and familiarity here, so that I no longer find new and overwhelming experiences every week. And, of course, He's growing this precious child of ours. From two small cells, full of life and humanity even then, to three inches long now and more complex than man can understand.

These small beginnings are beauties to me--miracles which "are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see {C.S. Lewis}." What small beginnings and miracles have you experienced in your life lately?

*We’re not planning to find out his gender until the birth, but I refer to the baby as a “he” for no other reason than ease of communication (grammatically speaking, the masculine pronoun is always used when the gender is unknown).