While I’m between work projects, I’m ankle deep in fabric and thread making the bedding for a dear friend’s first child.

Too often the greatest curse is knowing exactly what you’re looking for; it’s a recipe to nearly guarantee you won’t find it. A simple white blouse? A basic pair of black heels? Impossible not to find, right? Absolutely—unless you’re desperately looking for them. Then you are S.O.L.

Such is the fate of my friend looking for the perfect colored and patterned set for her baby’s room. Her husband can offer his thoughts, but this is really her ballgame and he’s smart enough to play along. He’s the logical thinker and she’s the emotional compass. They know their roles and each other’s, and their marriage is the better for it.

Where I come in is by thinking a bit outside the box, which is typically my role. If you can’t find it, we’ll make it. We can choose to see opportunities or obstacles. That vision is entirely up to us. So when the mother-to-be couldn’t find the perfect bedding, I told her to go buy the fabric and patterns and send it my way because I would make it all for them.

I enjoy sewing. It’s a bit of a forgotten luxury. There’s a pattern, a process, and a tangible rewarding product at the end of that labor. And with this particular project, I have the gift of praying and meditating my love into each cut and every stitch. I breathe love and calm and hopefully some wisdom through my hands as I work.

I tell our little peanut this:

You are loved, and you will be loved and adored unconditionally every day of your life by the parents that have wanted you and waited for your perfect glorious arrival into their lives.

You can rest easy, knowing that you are safe and protected, and those funny big people making faces at you and talking in funny voices may seem nuttier than a Snickers bar, but they’re good people who may not fully comprehend how much a new life understands and absorbs from the very beginning. Eventually those funny big people will talk to you like a person like your parents will from that very first day.

Because they have so much to tell you and share with you. They’ve been waiting a lifetime for you, and you will feel every ounce of often overwhelming vulnerability and strength glowing from within your mommy and daddy.

For a little while, your mommy will fret over every bug bite and scrape of your knee as though she’d committed a terrible crime. She will cry every time you do. It’s okay. Hang in there. She’ll loosen up, though she will forever feel every bump and bruise and pain with you as though it were her own.

For a little while, your daddy will have wrinkles in his forehead, stressing over where his time and attention are most valuably placed, because he wants so desperately to give you everything and be everywhere. It’s okay. Hang in there. He’ll find a balance, calibrating and recalibrating over the years of your youth.

You won’t know this word, balance, at first. But you will know what it is, as you witness your parents trying new things and evolving into their new roles, lives forever redefined by a love they could never prepare for. That love is you.

Know that every day you are a precious gift to our lives, and like so many who love you even before we’ve met you, we are signing up to be your village. Just as your parents have cared for and loved our families and our children, we love your family and we have a vested interest in helping you reach for all of your dreams.

That’s what I tell him while I’m pinning his bed skirt and sewing his bumper guards. I share stories of the millions of magical moments I bask in of raising my own daughter, and how excited I am for each magical moment he has ahead of him. I tell him he is life force. He is energy. He is hope. He is love.

Relephant:

10 Ways Children show us the way to Happiness.

~

Author: Cristy Courtney

Editor: Travis May

Photo: Flick/Dani0010