Baby!

Not long ago my wife and I were blessed with a baby.  A beautiful, healthy, little girl.  Our lives are joyously forever changed. 

It’s amazing how delicate the whole thing is.  Two tiny cells come together, and start dividing, and dividing, and specializing, and then they become organs, and those organs start functioning, and then…she came out with all her countless complexities working just fine.  How does that happen?  And then, after she is born, she’s totally dependent on us for everything.  For nutrition, and warmth, and care, and protection…everything.  She’s so delicate.  I feel as if the whole thing could go wrong at any point, and that it hasn’t so far is an absolute miracle. 

I recently heard a sports commentator say that having a child is something that unites all people, in all lands, across all times.  It’s just something you don’t understand until you experience it first-hand.  And when you do, you see how hard it is – how crazy it is! – and then you realize that it’s something that every single parent in human history has experienced.  There’s not a lot out there that unites everyone. 

I keep thinking about those ancient humans, wondering through fields or mountains or deserts, without the comforts of 21^st century America – how did they do it?  How did they struggle so hard for simple survival and take care of little ones?  How did we, as a race, survive? 

Maybe my daughter isn’t so delicate?  Maybe humanity is stronger than I think?  No…she’s pretty tiny, and pretty helpless.  Beautiful, but totally helpless. 

I also think about the baby Jesus, being just as dependent on his parents as my daughter is on my wife and me.  That God humbled Himself to become a human is something I’ve tried to understand; that He became an infant is something I never even thought about until just now.  I got that there was supposed to be a connection between God and me though Christ, but right now, I think, I feel a certain connection to Mary and Joseph, a connection that has caught me off-guard, and one that has brought me even closer to the divine. 

For the birth of my child, and for all children – Thanks be to God!