Meet Elijah

I know it has been a while since our last blog, but we have been a little busy these past few weeks.  As you may have already heard, Elijah was born Feb 3 at 9:22am, weighed 7lbs 11oz, and was 21 inches long.  I can’t even describe what it was like meeting him for the first time because it was humbling beyond anything that I can think of.  Not too long ago Jess and I were asked a simple question in an interview, “Do you have any hopes and dreams for your son even though he has not yet been born?”  In that moment I could think of nothing else but that my hope and my dream for Elijah is that he will one day know Jesus Christ and spend eternity with Him.  I am fairly certain that is not what the interviewer was asking, but the thought and response was so overwhelming that if he had asked me to go any further I couldn’t have done it.  All I could think about was the hope that we have that Elijah will know Jesus Christ, period, the end and we cannot wait to see that become a reality.

A little over a year ago, we met Sophie.  I vividly remember the nurse bringing her out and us asking through the glass, “Is it a girl or a boy?”  Honestly I was shocked that Sophie was there because there was always this little thought in my mind that I might never meet her (she was 2 weeks late while Elijah was 2 weeks early).  I was so nervous driving with her in the car for the first time, I was terrified to hold her, and when I changed her diaper for the first time I thought that I might break her.  It took me a while to get used to having a baby in the house and the whole thing was surreal for quite a while.  Elijah has not been like that at all!  I am not sure what he will be like or how his personality will develop, but I do know that from the beginning he has just kind of fit in.  I never really doubted that he was coming, we knew he was a boy when we were first matched, and the first time I held him it just seemed easy and natural.  I know it is because he is our second and he came only 15 months after our first, but it almost seems like he is just fitting right in immediately.  There is some transition and Sophie is a little discombobulated (which is the understatement of the year) but just looking at him laying in his bouncer (that is what he is doing as I write) he just seems cozy, safe, and exactly where he was always supposed to be.

I remember when I wrote the “Meet Sophie” blog last year because I remember the sadness I felt for our kids in Haiti.  It was a very specific and very intense sadness that came about when I wrote about Sophie for the first time and I knew that there was nothing that could make me leave her or stop loving her.  I didn’t know anything about her except that she was mine.  When I saw Elijah sitting under that warming lamp with all of that hair (he has almost as much as Sophie already) I just had this sense of love, this desire to protect, and this overwhelming feeling that I would already do anything for him no matter what it was.  It was the same feeling that I have had 2 other times in my life, on my wedding day and the day Sophie was born.  I know that I had that from my parents on the day I was born and every child should have someone who loves them like that.  It made me sad for our kids.  Do they have that now…Absolutely from both Jessica and me!  But they did not always and there are millions of children around the world that will never know what it means to be loved like that by another human.  So, meet Elijah!  He is an incredible and very cute boy who pretty much sleeps all of the time!  Somehow, though, he has already taught me something about life.  He has taught me about the love that every child should experience from the day they are born and should never doubt for the rest of their life…The love of a parent.  I think about the love that Elijah already has and how that will hopefully shape the rest of his life in a very positive way.  It is up to us as followers of Christ to make sure every child in the world experiences this starting with our own!