I was just twenty years old when they first laid you on my chest. 8lbs 12oz, 21-1/2" long. Warm, crying, needing me, new.

So new.

Nothing about your arrival was quick. For hours upon hours I groaned and wept with pang after pang, trying not to watch the clock as hour after grueling hour and then day after grueling day went by,  but then-- suddenly-- you were here. With one push and in one great burst, sac still in tact until the midwife tore it open to pull you out, what seemed likely to never happen did happen: you were here.

Healthy, pink, soft, beautiful.

(Sometimes even still I think that is your way: slowly and at times painfully drawing things out until suddenly it all changes and I can hardly remember what the struggle was all about anyway.)

I reeled with the emotion of it all. My heart soared as a deep love and fierce protectiveness that I had never before known welled up inside of me, and simultaneously trembled with the knowledge that you were born broken and into a broken world and to broken parents.

Would I be as good to you as I wanted to be? Would I be able to take care of you, protect you, shield you, train you?

For weeks after you were born, I would hold you in the darkness, sitting in my rocking chair, tears streaming down my face.

How could I be enough?

I cried because I wanted to be. So badly I wanted to be!

I cried because I knew I couldn't be.

But He has been enough.

For you. For me.

For the broken parts of both of us that have brought us time and again to each other in repentance (and how thankful I have been over the years for your arms-- first round and dimpled and now long and lanky-- that have embraced me with free forgiveness whenever I have asked).

For the broken world that sometimes leaves us feeling bruised and battered.

For teaching us how to pick ourselves up, laugh much, share even more.

For learning how to let go and enjoy the gift of each day spent together.

You changed my life that day, Gabriel Sinclair Paladin. You are one of the best gifts I have ever received, far more precious and priceless than any thing I might ever acquire. You bear the image of the eternal God and even still, for a time anyway, you are mine and I am yours. What a miracle that is, and what a joy it is to celebrate your life and who you are to me, to Daddy, to our family.

Happy ninth Birthday to my growing man-child. I love you so very, very much.