Before You Were Born

 

The Lord appeared to us in the past saying, “I have loved you with an everlasting love, I have drawn you with loving kindness.” Jeremiah 31:3

 

Today we will celebrate our youngest son’s thirtieth birthday.  It is hard for me to believe that he is thirty. In my mind he’s still four, pretending to be an old man, with his baby sister at his side pretending to be his wife. As we’ve planned and cooked and created surprises for today I’ve gone back in time. I remember being pregnant, delivering him, the news that he was a boy, a very big boy. So it was quite fitting today that my first devotional reading of the morning included these words, “Before you were born I knew you.”

It made think of Jeffrey. Due to his size, 9 pounds, 22 inches, Jeffrey made his presence very much known to me in the months that we resided literally together. I joked about his very active behavior when he began to roll, kick and poke but those jokes changed to a feeling of concern when the movements slowed down to very little activity. My doctor quickly assured me that it was because my baby had no room to move around but that the baby was, in fact, just fine.

Note my use of the words, “the baby” or “my baby.” I’m in my fifties. In my day there weren’t scans to tell you the gender of the baby. Those scans were brand new, used very rarely. The morning of November 30, 1983 all I could tell you about my baby was that he or she was making it very hard for me to sit down and that I loved that baby sight unseen. I did not know Jeffrey before he was born, anymore than I knew his older brothers, Paul and Joseph, or baby sister Laura. I knew that they were mine, that I wanted them and that I would love them no matter what. I did not however have a clue of how difficult no matter what could get.

This morning I read the words, “Before you were born I knew you” and had a heightened respect, love and sense of gratitude toward God. I did not know when I was carrying and delivering each one of my children that while each of them would bring incredible joy, amusement, tenderness and love, that each one would also break my heart at times in ways I could never imagine. The depth and ability a child possesses to cause pain to a parent is unfathomable until it occurs. The level of ability to forgive and move on is a beautiful gift from God. But I didn’t know about that pain before I had children nor did I know about the connection or joy I would feel. What if I’d known the whole story? Would I have chosen to be a mother? I can’t honestly say. For one reason our journeys are still going and for another, I also didn’t know that God would give me strength and comfort.

God knew and knows us all, from conception to eternity. He loves us the entire way through with no strings or conditions. Sadly, I cannot say the same. I have, at times, placed conditions on my children. What’s worse I’ve done it passive/aggressively. The whole “of course I love you but please by all means feel the intensity of my disapproval.” YUK! All I can say is PRAISE GOD, that he does not love us that way.

Our Father knew before we were born, about every sin that we would commit and still he allowed our lives to happen, he allows us to sin and repent over and over again without fear of having gone too far.

My son Jeffrey is a precious gift in my life and I wouldn’t give him up or trade him, ever. Today, because the focus was on him, on his birth he helped me to see a wonderful truth in a deeper way. God’s love is truly a free gift, given with full knowledge that we did not and cannot deserve it and that, as horrific as this sounds, sometimes we don’t care if we have it or not. We ignore God and he knew we would.

It has always been my goal to be the best mother I could be. Looking over my children’s lives I fear that my best, if in fact they got it, was just not good enough. My children may measure, they do measure, and find me lacking but our Father doesn’t ever measure. He simply but perfectly loves.