Knowing God's love: My son's first days.

This month we will be celebrating my oldest son's fourth birthday.  Which in itself is an example of God's love because prior to finding out my wife was pregnant, we were told by our doctor that we weren't going to be able to have kids of our own.  We spent some time begging for it not to be true.  We spent more time trying to figure out how we were going to afford adoption.  I had a hard time being completely satisfied with this conclusion.  Once, I stood at the kitchen counter pleading with God for it not to be true.  But, I conceded that day that we would be happy with who He brings to us.  There wasn't full blown bitterness but to be honest, I had felt defeated.

Soon after that I got a strange message from a crying woman, who I had assumed was my wife, saying she just took three pregnancy tests that turned up positive!
I was working construction at the time and had to sneak all my phone calls in the port-potty, which made for an uncomfortable phone booth.
I sat there in disbelief, with what I assumed was a dumb grin on my face and tears running down my cheeks.  I listened to that message a few times before I realized I was going to have to face the jobsite with red teary eyes.

Fast forwarding to the day he was born, I got another call at work but was bold enough, under the circumstance of having a wife due at any moment, to not use the jobsite phone booth.

My wife's water broke!

Something I had resigned to never hear.

At the hospital, after what I deemed to be a successful drive full of honking and flashing headlights, we were excited and calm in our room.
Checked in and waiting for the doctor.
Nervous and trusting.
Trusting in God, like two newborn deer with wobbling legs.
Ready to fall over at any moment.

I even managed to snap a photo of my wife laying in bed with a thumb up in the air and smiling.

That's when it hit the fan.
Our son's heart monitor dropped out.

We looked at each other as we listened to multiple sets of feet running down the hall towards our room.  Nurses came crashing in, destroying our nerves.  One of them barking orders at my wife to get on all fours on the bed.  My wife cried out for me to pray for us.  I have no idea what I prayed for, I'm sure it didn't make any sense.  I was just as scared as she was and in too much shock to react.

They said our son was not responding in her womb.
They said there would have to be an emergency c-section.
I sat outside the operating room begging for Jesus to be with us.  Then begging for Him to leave me and be with her because she needed Him more.  Little did I know, at the time, how much I needed Him and how easily Jesus could be with both of us.
All of us.

We spent the next eleven days in the hospital running antibiotics through our new son's body.  I changed his first diaper in a plastic chamber with wires running from just about everywhere.  That was the first diaper I had ever changed.  Seems kind of  small looking back, after witnessing friends run chemo through there ten month old for six months. But at the time it was all I could do but cling to God.  I had to drive home thirty minutes each way to replenish clean clothes and clean myself up.

Those drives were some of the most memorable in my life.
God's love continually washed over me like a warm waterfall.
I poured my heart out to Him and He listened.
As cliche as it may sound, I am grateful for those days now.
Those eleven days changed my faith.
Those drives showed me how He loves us.