i pray you have a wilder imagination

Dear tiny person, 17 weeks alive now,You will start hearing my voice soon - the sound of my heartbeat, loud and steady, the movement and rhythm of my body in the midst of all the ordinary work of these spring days. And you'll hear Dad's voice, the voices of the people around us, the noises of this life you're coming into.I have been hearing a lot of questions about you. People ask me, "but how will you still be a student?" and "will you quit school?" and "aren't you going to need more time off?" and when I say no, they look at me surprised, a little concerned, a little knowing. They let the silence hang between us, the wide-eyed looks that carry the message across the inches of dusty floor - surely, surely, you didn't think all this was possible. haven't you underestimated how hard it will be? I am praying that you never hear these questions from me.I am praying that when your dad and I hold you, we tell you the stories, again and again, that we are a people who never underestimate anything but the power of the Lord Jesus to walk into our lives and unfold the most surprising, most marvelous, most extraordinary things.Your life is the gift that your dad and I never imagined we would be so privileged to see so soon. Your life is the greatest gift God has given us.I pray that I do not ask you questions that say your imagination is too unrealistic. That you can't possibly think you can do this and that at the same time, that you are underestimating how hard it will be, how much work it will be, how likely it is to fall apart.I pray that you will hear me say instead that our imaginations should be wider, and wilder. I pray you will hear what I know in my bones, that we too often live limited lives because we limit our imaginations. We think that motherhood and philosophy graduate seminars can't possibly both be successful; we think that you must choose between art and biology; we think that you cannot travel AND or be married AND or work this challenging job AND or ...and we teach this to each other, with our well-meaning questions and our expectant looks, with our heartfelt, "but how will that work?" Our imaginations grow small in the shadow of what we think more realistic.I pray that your imagination is wilder than that. I pray that you hear the voice of the Good Shepherd, who will call you to get out of the boat, to leave behind what you know, to go into towns and cities, to leave the empty tomb with just the wild hope and these words: "I have seen the Lord!"I pray you know that this is enough reason to rejoice in even what seems difficult or strange in the eyes of the world. It might not satisfy other people. And right now when I put my hand over the place where I know you're growing, and I tell those who ask me these questions that I am not afraid to be a student and a mother, to be a wife and a philosopher and to hold you in the long nights and read to you about epistemology and the Rainbow Fish -when I do this, it probably doesn't satisfy the person who asked me.But if it does not - if the question still lingers, how can she think all this is possible, then I dare them all to take that question and place it before the Lord Jesus. I believe Jesus will widen their imagination. I believe that Jesus will remind them of the stories:Abraham, who left everything he knew to follow God,Moses and the people of Israel, who followed God into the water of the Red Sea and walked safely,Ruth, who left everything she knew to go with Naomi,Hannah, who did not leave God alone in praying for her son,Mary, who gave birth to God Himself in Jesus,Peter, who got out of the boat, and even when he doubted, cried out and Jesus saved him immediately,of the people Jesus healed, and ate with, whose faith, whose wild imagination carried them into the very heart of God.And I believe that you, and me, and Dad, we are one story numbered among the thousands that Jesus tells about those who love Him. They are all stories of wilder imagination. They are stories of people who love, and this love, it casts out their fears, their idea of limits, their idea of what will be too hard and too much and so hard to imagine how it will all work. And so, beautiful, breathtaking tiny human being listening to my heartbeat, I pray that you are filled up all these many years with a wild imagination. I pray that you feel these stories around you, in your bones. I pray that you know most of all that God loves you, wildly, beyond your imagining - and when God calls out to you, you need never fear - it is His love, calling you to Himself.Love,mom