You Will Be Thankful

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You will be THANKFUL.

In any given year, I’ll listen to thousands of podcast episodes, but there’s only been one ever to succeed at making me tear up. It’s an episode of Radiolab from about five years ago called 23 Weeks, about this little girl named Juniper who was born about four months ahead of schedule. The show did such a good job showing everything her parents did despite barely being able to touch her, and the uncertainty of it all.

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That show reminded me that having kids is always a dice roll. You never know when you’ll end up running into a genetic issue you’ve never heard of before, a kid who has trouble feeding, maternal complications, or all kinds of unknowns.

For Deanna and I, we had good reasons to think we wouldn’t have an easy and straightforward road towards becoming parents. We weren’t certain if we even could, biologically. But we wanted to.

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People like to pray for answers to their questions, but personally, I rarely get answers. Instead I get doses of truth that I actually needed to hear.

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So as we started trying, I asked for things to go well and be easy.

Instead, I heard— You will be thankful.

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For real, our two year journey from trying to becoming parents hasn’t been easy. There have been all sorts of uncertainties and surprises and scares and things to figure out as we go.

During the hardest parts, I questioned if I heard that thankful thing correctly. I would repeat it over a lot. But what if I just made it up to myself.

But what I heard was absolutely right. I do feel thankful. And I know that’ll be even more true in about a month.

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When I think about the end of that Radiolab episode, and now my own past two years, they reminded me of what the best stories feel like. Rewarding. Grueling as they unfold, but when they end, they make you so glad to be alive.

You will be thankful.