2 years ago today I was screeching down an Oklahoman interstate with a nervous husband and 2 toddler girls strapped in their car seats in the back seat.  The roads had just melted from a blizzard we had had days earlier and snow drifts were piled up high with capsized cars scattered like ants on a hill.  My contractions were coming less than a minute apart and I began feeling the urge to push… {You can read the rest of the birth story here.}

Yes.  That’s where I was 2 years ago and I’ll never forget it.   That season of our life was so uncertain and so…day-at-a-time.  Like a new book with none of the chapters yet titled.  You were like the calm before the storm, son.  My steady eddie growing faithfully in my womb while life blew all around us…

Back inside that screeching car, feelings from the past 4 weeks swirled inside my head.  Grasping at anything to keep delivery at bay, I entertained them.  I remembered vividly the uncertain feeling I had felt when we walked off the plane as a family to meet the midwest.  It had been just a few weeks before this hectic car ride and you were safe in my belly at the time and I was safe in God’s hands.  I also remembered feeling fear when I would get lost in Tulsa trying to find my way to third trimester doctor’s appointments, just weeks away from my due date.  The feeling of new doctors and a new hospital and new people helping us with our kids.

My thoughts jolted back to reality as I crashed into a wheelchair and nurses rushed me to a bed and ripped my clothes off.  Concentration took the place of feelings.  Sterile hospital equipment took the place of memories.  And it was then that you were born.  In the middle of all this newness I found myself apart of, I met you for the first time, son.  Keller Reagan Johnson.

And you were new too.

It’s hard to put your finger on what it is about birth that is such a miracle.  Is it the newness?  Is it the anticipation?  Is it the pain disappearing and the reward appearing?  I’m not sure, but it is just so incredible.  9 months of waiting and wondering and it culminates in that moment when the doctor hands you your baby and says, “Meet your son.”  

So miraculous!

And when I finally met you Keller, I cried.  I cried for a million reasons, but mostly because I loved you.  So much.  And I don’t know how to quite put my finger on that either.  How God puts that immense and protective love in us mothers for our babies.  How He takes the part of us that is living and breathing and invests it in the life that depends on us for survival.  It happens from the minute you’re in our womb…before we’ve met you.  And then when we meet in real life it’s like…well…like a chorus of angels is singing in heaven.  Like the world is right and good.

What do we mothers see when we finally meet you?  When we finally set our ultrasound pictures down and look into your newborn eyes for the first time?  We see newness and innocence.  We see beginning.  We see softness.  We see needs.  We see complete trust in your slow-blinking eyes…

And I guess that’s the part about motherhood that really gets to me, son.  The part where I know practically nothing about being a mum and yet you trust me like I’ve been doing this for years.  But that’s just it.  You’re it.  You’re my first run at raising a little boy and I don’t get redo’s or time travel if things don’t pan out.  I hope you’re ok with that.  I mean, I’ve got the feeding thing down and the diapers and rough and tumble play.  I know which bath toys are your favorite and that you like to read books with trucks and animals in them.  But when I take my eyes off of your immediate needs and think about the future, I shake in my boots.  I don’t want to mess this up, you know?

Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this.  Maybe I should act like I’ve got everything under control, so you’ll never doubt my ability.

But then, you’re going to be a dad one day, most likely.  And what if you think all good parents only know everything and have everything under control?  What if you think we never apologize…because we always know best.  What if you think life is just rules…because you knew what would happen if it wasn’t.  What if you thought being a kid was just an annoyance…because I treated you like you were.  What if you thought it only mattered how we looked to other people…because that’s who really matters anyway.

To be perfectly honest…we don’t know what we’re doing.  At least, I don’t.  And yes.  There will be times I’m too prideful and I won’t apologize.  Yes.  I’ll be legalistic and forget to talk straight to your heart.  Yes. On some afternoons, I’ll get annoyed and make you feel like you’re encroaching on my life.  And yes.  Maybe I will care more about what people think of us in the grocery store, than you.

 And you can gasp and wriggle and squirm that I just admitted that, but it’s true.  Oh, so painfully true.  And I would rather admit that to you than pretend like I know everything and have everything under control.  I would rather let you know up front: I don‘t have all the answers.  I would rather admit to you that I will not be the perfect mom, than make you feel like you’re not the perfect child.

Because me and you?  We’re muddling through this mum and son thing together.

I wish they would give us mums a formula for success.  I wish I knew all the right things to say and all the right things to do to be a perfect parent…for you, Keller.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter how much I do, do, do. I’ll still forget to show you the love of Jesus.   I’ll still lose my temper when you smear glue during the pinterest project.  I’ll still get stressed out when dinner flops…and I’ll take it out on you.  I’ll still get all puffed up with pride that I took you to the aquarium {and educated you about sea life as a 1-yr-old, by golly}.  I’ll still come short.  In so many ways.

But this is my hope, Keller Reagan.  That I’ll show you the love of Jesus.  That the crafts and the schooling and the pictures and the cute clothes fade away and you’ll see that one thing.  Jesus’ love.  That somehow you’ll look back on our memories together and you’ll know it wasn’t about me.  Or you.  It was about God.

That you’ll see His hand and His overarching story in our life together.  That’s my prayer.

I don’t know where the bends in your road will take you, son.  The colors you’ll see in your lifetime.  The words you’ll pen in your book.  But this I do know: there will always be newness in life.  New chapters with new places.  New people.  New lessons.  And you’ll struggle to adapt and change and be a good husband and father through it all.

But you know who stays the same, son?  God.  He’s the steady One.  The unchanging One.  And even though I’ll fail you, and people around you will fail, God won’t.  Not ever.

Happy Birthday to the smiliest, craziest, chubbiest, toothiest son-of-a-gun alive.  You keep me laughing and make my world full of color.  I can’t wait to see your story unfold…

 love, mum

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