My Precious Everett,
I do hope that’s your name. Otherwise this letter may be a little anti-climactic if you ever find it someday. Your dad and I have wrestled over it for months, and we keep coming back to it. Everett means “brave”...we have prayed that you would grow to be a man of courage and kindness. So it seems to fit. Your middle name is another story. You currently have 12...including some crowd-pleasing fillers since we aren’t telling anyone your name till you make your appearance (Buzz-lightyear, hurricane, excalibur, and volcano are commonly shared options).
I have to write this letter today. My heart has been so full and so changing the last few weeks, and if I don’t sit down today I won’t be able to remember this precious time. In the next 2 weeks we will close on our house, clean and do some basic painting, get carpets installed, move in, finish packing our current place. I will finish work at the clinic. We will pack and repack our hospital bag and finish birth classes. And, more than likely, you will make your way into this world. It’s so hard to believe.
My sweet, dear, beautiful son, you have to know how excited we are to meet you. For so long you have been a reality, but a distant one, born of a different dimension and living there still, only occasionally brushing the edges of ours. But these last few weeks have been different. Due to your size, your dates, and the bits of your personality we can interpret through the wall of my belly, it feels like you are really here. Last week during our ultrasound we saw you...really saw you for the first time. We marveled at your chubby cheeks and your large nose (sorry son, you had it coming from both sides of the family...) while you sucked your thumb and wiggled in a stubborn and fruitless effort to get away from the transducer. It took my breath away to see you there...the same little one for whom we have prayed and dreamed, the same face we will be able to touch and kiss in just a few short days. The Lord has been knitting you together for months, and the time is near. You are already a masterpiece. It’s an incredible feeling to know that my body has been used as a vessel for this miracle. It’s perhaps the most sacred experience of my life to date. I am connected to you, and to time and eternity, in ways I couldn’t explain if I tried.
Your dad has loved talking to you through my tummy since you were the size of a lime, and for several months I’ve known you are already his boy...when he starts talking and playing with you and sharing music through his headphones on my belly the wiggles and games are always quick to follow. You poke back where he prods you and you find him if he is tickling my belly. We feel like we can already see little pieces of you coming through. For so long the division between us has felt fixed and thick. These days it seems paper thin...like if we reach or look hard enough, we might be able to hold you right this moment. Daddy has stopped telling you “keep growing little man” or “you’re getting so big!” and has started saying “come out now!” and “we can’t wait to meet you.”
When you kick and I cuddle your form from the outside I have begun to imagine how the same form will feel in my arms. And with each movement I can feel my heart, my innermost being, shifting too. I’ve been worried at times that I won’t know what to do when you come, that being a mother won’t be as natural to me as I assumed for so many years. But this last week, I can feel fixed and certain parts of my insides shifting and loosening and molding around something. Pieces that are about to become central to my being are currently unknown to me. How is it possible?
The boxes are piling up around this house, not just the normal chaos of moving, but packages arriving daily from Amazon and friends bearing gifts. Quilts, clothes, hand-me-downs, nipple creams, pacifiers, essential oils, burp rags, decorations for your nursery, diapers, bath supplies. All paraphernalia of a life I have yet to know, which will be a reality for years, maybe decades to come. Since we don’t have a room for you yet, these tools and gifts are being packed into boxes by order of (hopeful) priority. Daddy has strict instructions to find box #1 and #2 immediately if I go into labor. As if the contents will somehow get me through that terrifying and wonderful process, and the days to immediately follow, without a hitch.
People have been so generous, lavishing advice and love, emotional support and physical resources. The older female patients at the clinic can’t stop smiling at me with an all-knowing look. Some of them seem to almost burst with joy for me...trying to put into words an emotion I will soon feel. I am lucky. I have felt joy, such great joy, in my life. But it’s clear from the light in their eyes that this brand of joy will be new...completely foreign and perfect in its chaotic grace. Space-filling and life-giving and mind-blowing and the perfect mate to the puzzle piece of my life to this point. It’s strange to anticipate what I’m so unable to understand.
My son, as my heart sings and my mind spins this week, there are some things I want you to know. Maybe I want me to know them too...but I know that I need to share, to put them down in ink, to be able to remember.
~1~ With all of this excitement and chaos and joy, you should know that the last few weeks have felt a bit melancholy too. As I sit on the couch with your dad or drive around town with him picking paint or talking about plans over dinner, I realize that so much of what we have built is about to change. My heart bursts and my throat swells at the thought of how much I love your Dad. He has been my rock, my closest companion, my dearest confidant, the lover of my body and my soul for most of the last decade. There is no one I would rather spend time with...both the fancy, adventurous, exciting times, and the quiet and worn out times at the ends of ordinary days. I love that when I tell him “you’re my man” he always responds with “you’re my girl.” I love holding his strong hands. I love the way he looks in my eyes and cups my head in his hands and speaks right to my depths and I can feel my fears evaporate. I love his corny jokes and silly serenades and the teasing that keeps me laughing at myself. I love his voice and his musical talent and sitting beside him as he “noodles” on his favorite guitar, milking loveliness and peace right out of that lifeless wood and steel. I love watching him get to know you even now. I love that last night he told me he would miss patting my belly after you come, because right now he can check on both of us in one movement.
Curling up next to him in bed when the sky is dark and the air is weary is like a breath of mountain air. One hug, one look can give me the strength to keep going on my weakest days. His wit and heart make me laugh, make me cry, make me believe again in myself or the world. His faith is solid, and he points me to the truth when my demons are screaming too loud. His passion for people and for truth is palpable. His eyes are honest and challenge me to keep growing and learning. The first years of marriage have been up and down, like any true love. But we have learned so much about how to trust each other, how to care for each other, how to honor and respect the other. We mess up, we cry and yell, we try to hide rolling eyes and crushed spirits. But we always return, and I have a sense we are just scratching the surface of the rich, deep love we will share one day.
Having you join us will make that love instantly deeper, for there is no greater representation of the nebulous miracle we call “our love” than a new human form. But we know too that your presence will change us. It will divide our time and our attention. It will put us through new challenges, new differences of opinion (which are always plentiful), new priorities and questions of values. Quiet nights of rest, spontaneous moments to show love, late lazy mornings in bed will be harder to find. Our mutual worry and care will shift towards you, and away from the singular one-faceted nature of our current assignment.
We will love you the best we know how...but I want you to know too that it’s one of my greatest goals to love you less than I love him. I don’t know much about parenting, but I know that when children become the epicenter of everything in the home, things have a tendency to crumble. It’s going to tear at me sometimes to turn away from you, but I will do it if it means preserving a few moments of connection with your dad. I will seek the Lord first, and I will love your dad second to no man or child, and from that wellspring I will love you with the rest of my being. I’ll fail, and I need you to forgive me for that in advance. But that is a goal I hold sacred as I start this next chapter.
~ 2 ~ I’m worried about becoming separated from you. It struck me this last week how much I think of you as a part of my own body, and even spirit. As I talk to you I feel like I’m coaching myself. When you kick and squirm, I feel lifted and encouraged and reminded of what is precious and perfect about myself...mostly that I carry you. I know already my identity has changed as you have grown in me. When you come out, I’ll be able to behold you in such new ways, but I’ll also have to share you...with family and friends who will love and dote on you, with your dad who will teach you everything you need to know about this world, with strangers as I work or sing in church or do other things that make me who I am. I fight fear in this time that my longing for you will be painful when we are physically separated. I fight fear that my own person may not be enough for me after you aren’t physically a part of it.
I know it sounds silly. But I worry that my efforts will focus on re-capturing you to myself rather than learning how to guide and support you and then send you away on whatever adventures your age and calling might present to you. I want you to know that I’ll try. I’ll try to be me, and to continue to seek God’s callings on me separate from you and your growth. And I’ll try to never block or frustrate your adventures and calling and development because of my own selfishness. The only pain greater than the ever widening separation between us would be to hold you back from the man God has already designed you to be.
~ 3 ~ It’s important to me to tell you that you have an incredible family. Probably the greatest blessings that God has laid in our path are the people who stand on either side of it and cheer us on. The extended Holmes and Higgins families are packed with people who will love you more than you can imagine. They are people who know and love the Lord, who encourage each other to keep following Him, who love to have fun, who love each other. Everett, do not ever take them for granted. There are so many in this world who stand alone at life’s greatest and toughest moments...you will never be one of them. Thank the Lord for your roots, son, they will help you stand tall.
Outside of your biological family, we have been given a community that is so dear to us here in California and back home in Illinois. It’s impossible for me to predict for you the ones who will still be sharing life with us when you are old enough to understand this letter, but many people who are contributing most to your wellbeing today are not related...some we have only known a few years. But they have welcomed us in, loved us and cared for us when we were far from home, and they are all ready to love you. Son, when your future adventures take you away, look into the eyes of those you meet. Remember that so many of them will need the community that you crave. Sometimes you get welcomed into it, but sometimes you create it for someone else. I hope you have many opportunities to do both. God has made us to need one another...the fruit that comes from sharing love and life is sacred and essential.
If you stay put, if I have time, if the contemplation continues to come, I’m sure I’ll add more. Maybe someday you will read these. Maybe they are just for me.
I’m praying for you more these days than ever before, praying that you will be courageous and full of compassion as you come into this world. Praying that you lead like your dad, quietly and honestly and with great passion. Praying that you would find adventure to be a calling, that you will notice those who are hurting and needing love, that you would have your eyes away from your own concerns and on the needs of others. That your confidence would overflow, that you would always find yourself surrounded by friends and with just enough adversity in front of you that you discover how strong you are. I pray that you would feel the call of the Lord early your life, that His purpose would be your greatest desire. I pray that your joy will be complete, that your wife will be loving and lovely and feisty and always seeking truth, that your family will build on the heritage of your grandparents. That your life would be full.
I love you more than you can possibly know...until we meet, dear one.
Mamma
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