dear jackson: you show me Jesus

Dear Jackson,You're in six month pajamas tonight, and I can see that the feet are far too big for you, the little husky puppy faces on the ends dangling helplessly where your toes can't quite reach. You're growing so much, buddy, that I can't really believe that we were in the NICU all those weeks ago. I just wrote down "months" and erased it, because this is the truth - time has changed for us. Hours are days and months are minutes. I think this is what they try to tell you when you become a parent - time reshapes itself in the midst of you.You'll know this yourself someday, I imagine. For now, you've been out in this wild world with us for 10 weeks, and you're sleeping, hands up by your face the way you always seemed to sleep those long months on the inside. I looked at those ultrasounds again (do you remember any of that? The echoes of strange voices talking to me and Dad about you? Did you ever shake your head, at how little we all knew of the mighty person you already were?) yesterday.There is no picture of you I do not find remarkably beautiful.--In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus. All the world, to be registered. This is one of the beginnings of the story of Jesus.There are many, though. There is the beginning with Mary and Gabriel, the Holy Shadow, the be it unto me. There is the beginning with prophets who cried out in wilderness and desert to make straight a highway for God. There is the beginning song of creation, the Word by which everything was made. This is the season where we begin the story, where we prepare, where we make ourselves ready--I want to tell you something about Jesus, Jack. But who am I to tell you anything about Him? You know Him. You know Him in a way I have forgotten, with your one eye scanning the world, always looking for Him, always eager, always anxious for another sighting, another glimpse.And then there you are, in the midst of the world where you are looking for the answer to your being here and the world being its beautiful self, and everyone who looks at you sees Jesus. You show Him to us.Oh, how you show Him to me. Every minute.Someone might think it's because you show me something about weakness or vulnerability. Someone else might think it's because you needed a trach and a feeding tube and it was so hard and I had to believe that God had good plans in spite of or even in the midst of.But you, Jack, you show me Jesus risen in glory and power. Jesus whose love is wild and unyielding. Jesus who walks the hallway of the NICU. Jesus who reigns in operating rooms and who comes in the might of other children who kneel the afternoon of your surgery to pray.You show me that Jesus is King and always has been.--What can I say to you about Jesus? In those days, a decree went out. An annunciation was made, and a visitation. There was a leaping for joy by John, after whom you're named (your names mean God has been gracious. But you already know this).When you open your eye in the mornings and smile at me, creasing your NAM tape, when you kick your feet up in the crib and toss your body back and forth as you reach for the toy fox, for your reflection in the mirror above your head on the play mat - you show me Jesus.In those days, God announced that He was sending you to us. In those days, God announced that you had been formed differently, that what nature often does it hadn't done the same way in you. In those days we walked, you and me, down many of the streets of downtown Waco, and in those days we caught glimpses of you - black and white, three-dimensional, printed on computer paper and clutched on the long ride home - and in those glimpses we knew. I know you, I would whisper over and over when I passed the fridge where your pictures hung. I know you, I would shout in my heart when the technicians swirled the ultrasound wand around my belly, looking for what makes you different, looking for a diagnosis. I know you. You show me Jesus, Jacks. Risen in glory and power, coming to us palms open, scars lit by the same glory, wound open so that we too can put a hand inside and touch the wonder of His work and rescue. You show me Jesus who comes in those days when the decree goes out.You show me Jesus, who holds you in those glorious scars and pours His love through them over you, and through you over others.In those days a decree went out. This is the season where we remember, where we tell the story, where we prepare for Him who is coming to live with us. And you, Jacks, you are leading me.Love,mom