I am hardly what one would call an extremely private person and am a fairly open book, but this is a more personal post than what would typically appear on my business blog.
So, in case you haven’t noticed, I am now hugely pregnant with our third baby. I avoided the camera like the plague for most of my pregnancy, feeling uncomfortable with my appearance and the fact that I’ve gained about a kagillion a few extra pounds with this one. Then I decided it was a bit hypocritical for me to spout off to potential clients about the need to embrace the moment and the beauty of one’s current state and not let moments pass by, and yet be so camera-phobic myself. So I turned my camera over to my hubby and let him snap a few, so that this new addition will see that we eagerly anticipated him.
Our newest baby will be named Seth. He is our blessed surprise baby, an unexpected blessing that perhaps at the very beginning I wasn’t quite sure how to welcome. You see, finding out you are pregnant three weeks before your scheduled layoff date from your full-time job is a bit scary, and that’s the situation I found myself in last summer. We love our kids but thought a third would be a “maybe one day” consideration… definitely not something we were planning right now!
We chose the name Seth, which means “appointed.” I am big into name meanings, and I love acknowledging that–even if *we* were not the ones planning his conception–Seth’s addition to our family was ordained by God before we even knew he was growing inside me. And if you look at the biblical story of Seth, he was the child given to Adam and Eve after they basically lost both of their oldest children, Cain and Abel–Abel through death and Cain to exile. Seth was a new beginning for them, though, and a new beginning to the story of God’s people.
Now, I don’t claim that we have been through anything as traumatic as losing our first children…but we have had a year of great flux and change, and I now welcome this new beginning that Seth represents for our family. In the past year, I have found God working in my life, and in my family’s life, in a lot of unexpected ways, and even though I still don’t quite “get it” all, I am trying to rest in the faith that all will work out, even in spite of the fact that things have deviated wildly from our “plan” for the past year or so.
I feel the tiny kicks and sometimes rollicking movements and anxiously anticipate Seth’s arrival, some time in the next month or so. The kids cuddle against me and kiss my belly, sometimes commenting on how big Seth is getting. I marvel at the life that grows inside me. And I wait and I pray, hoping that I will be the mama that he deserves, and that he will always know how loved he is.
