We Are All Children

It would be an understatement to say that we were suprised by the words, "it's a girl!" when Emily was born. We knew it was a boy. We just knew. Even though our ultrasound was inconclusive, we knew. It was a boy and he would be our last and we would finally have our completed family.

But it was a girl.

I can be honest when I say that there was not an ounce, not even a smidge, of any kind of disappointment in that first moment or minutes or days or weeks or the past 15+ months. There was shock and suprise. There was "are you SURE?!?". There was, "then where's the boy we KNEW we were having?". "Is there someone else in there??". And another, "are you SURE?"

The doctor was sure. It was a girl.

And she was ours right from the start. I had prepared myself mentally to move into a "mom of boys" mode and all that it brought with it ~ trucks and jeans and dirt and more dirt. Oh and did I mention dirt? I thought I was done with frills and dresses and hairdos and pink, pink and more pink. I felt lucky that I would be having each of these in their turn. We had three girls first. Then we'd have two boys. I would have had the chance to devote myself to little girls and then to little boys.

The fact that it didn't work out like I thought it would doesn't make me less lucky. Now that we have Emily, I think we're even more lucky, because we have her. She, who is the baby we never knew we would get; the baby we never got to know we wanted until she came.


Sunday in church Kurt had Emily standing on his lap and she was making funny faces to the people sitting behind us. She was squinting her eyes, as if by doing so she could disappear. She'd open her eyes with surprise, and people would laugh. Rinse, lather, repeat.

It was in one of those moments that I had a feeling of such mom-ness come over me: where would our family be without her? It would be incomplete, even though we might not know it (though a part of me knows we would know). We would have missed on all that is Emily ~ from her skinny chickenness as an infant, to her emerging words, her Schmemily Meeman moments (this is her alter ego and what we call her when she has seemed to have turned to the dark side).

It was a flood of thought and emotion that came more quickly than I can type them or even be able to sort them all out.

Later our YW President gave an incredible Christmas Lesson to all of our YW. She related to the girls how our Heavenly Father is literally the father of Jesus Christ, that He (Jesus) is divine, and that because of His divinity he was able to overcome not only physical death but spiritual death for all of us. She described the Atonement and talked about how our behavior can sometimes remove us from hearing and being close to Him. That by prayer and scripture study and repentance and church attendance we can better bring ourselves back into line with Him.

As I listened I thought about how we are all children of our Heavenly Father. And, as we sometimes compare our roles as parents to Heavenly Father's roll, in order to help us understand, even a little, the love he has for us, I thought again about my feelings for Emily, and for each of our children. And I thought about how our family would be missing something if Emily, or any of them, weren't there.

I thought about how it's the same for Heavenly Father's family. He loves each one of us, sent His Son for each of us, and His family would be missing something if we weren't back with Him someday. He would miss us, just like we would miss any of our children.

He is our Father, and we are all His children.