This afternoon, from my window seat, I watched as Lake Michigan drew patterns in itself like a mighty tessellation, waves ebbing over and over and creating tiny whitecaps plainly visible from a bird’s eye view. Between the clouds and a clear blue sky, below gray vapor and beneath a radiant golden sunshine, the familiar lake I have grown to love was not only captivating in a new way, but a welcome indication that I was nearing home. And somewhere, halfway between Milwaukee and Grand Rapids, juxtaposed between a wonderful weekend in a big city with friends and the impending start of another “normal” Monday, everything hung in a beautiful balance. Surrounded only by strangers and the hum of the plane, I was alone with my thoughts. Life, for a moment, was quiet.

Minutes later, as we passed over the long, lovely stretch of Michigan’s shoreline and the lake became a patchwork quilt of Autumn-kissed tree clusters and verdant farmland, I couldn’t help but marvel at the significance of a vast plain–the seemingly contrasting insignificance of individual buildings, homes, streets, lots and streams. I began to imagine families inside each home, men and women traveling from place to place in each little matchbox car. I thought about whole lives going on in spaces that, from above the earth, looked like pinpricks and monopoly pieces. And I started to feel both very small and extraordinarily humble at the same time–in a good way.

There in my seat, I considered how infinitesimal I truly am in the grand scheme, scientifically and/or physically speaking. And I couldn’t help but ponder the contrast of how significant–in the spiritual AND physical sense, I am to God. Below the airplane, I could hardly delineate property lines or bodies of water or even entire towns, but from a God’s eye view, He sees me and knows my name. He hears me and has numbered my days. I have never been more sure of this than now.

As we touched down in Grand Rapids, I placed my hand over a growing belly–my belly, in some instinctive effort to cradle another human being before it even enters this vast and miraculous world.

And I know now, more than ever, that God sees me and loves me.

He is forming new life inside my womb; He is teaching me, every single day, more about love and loving and hope and joy and trust than I ever imagined I could know. He is entrusting a new and precious life to us, and adding another chapter to who we are as individuals, as a family, as a young man and a young woman trying to pattern our hearts after His own.

We are delighted to become parents. And we’re excited and nervous and hope-filled and prayerful about what this new charge in our lives will mean. Daily, my mind fills up with all of the details–doctors appointments and nursery decor and baby-proofing and finances, health and eating well and caring for my body even more intently now that it is caring for another. And daily we acknowledge this growing belly and what it means is taking place beneath the surface–a beating heart, fingerprints, a speedily-developing, miraculous, incredible, tiny little human.

Some days, the intricacy of it all makes me feel like I did today in the airplane–all of the changes inside of me so seemingly small and imperceptible to the eye or mind, like individual trees and spaces and lives thousands of feet below. More than that though, I wonder at the attentiveness of a loving God who would, even now, be crafting and creating a soul whom He cares for as deeply as He has every other human being.

I will never be able to love this sweet, precious baby in the same way that God’s love has brought him or her into being. But oh, I’ll try. I will surely try. And when the time comes to welcome this new life into our arms and into our home, I know already in my heart that the lake and the sky, the sun and clouds, the beach and the landscape will all pale in comparison to those ten tiny fingers and those ten tiny toes–and to all of the days we will be privileged see God’s hand in every sound and inch and smile and cry. We are expecting a baby on May 1st. It sounds so extraordinary to me. And it is.

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”  Psalm 139.13-16

Expectantly, and with great joy,

mm