A Season of Joy

I spent Saturday baby shopping with my daughter. This will be her first baby, due in January. It's a surreal experience watching her prepare, and listening to her discuss the coming little one. We bought some maternity clothes and glided through several stores, fingering cute baby things and oogling cribs, strollers and car seats. We couldn't find exactly what she wanted in the stores.

"Order it online," I suggested. "You've got plenty of time."

She looked aghast at me. "Plenty of time? I ony have four and half months left!"

I chuckled,trying to remember how urgent everything seemed when my first baby was due. Later last night I read her blog. It was filled with updates on the baby and lots of worriesome questions. "Have we prepared enough? Have we prayed enough? Have we prepared a good home to bring this little Spirit into? Are we ready?"

"Yes," I typed back my reply. "By the posing of the questions I know that you and Nick are ready . . . ready for anything and everything, because you care and love so much."

This baby will be a miracle baby for so many wondrous reasons, but I remind everyone that every baby is, after all, a miracle.

She sat looking at the Ensign yesterday, musing over the article about single adults and recalling how sad she and her friends got as each semester rolled past, presenting no great love into their lives. She is whimsical about it now. With two brothers still rowing along the dating pool, she now understands about time and seasons. Things come when they will, and where they will, and we must do our faithful best until they arrive. Graduated, reluctantly returning home from Utah State, she found her husband right here in her home town, nearly two thousand miles from where she went to school. Good surprises do just that! They come unexpectedly, appearing out of nowhere when you least expect them . . . sometimes.

But some are very expected, and very planned for, and very prepared for. Like babies.