Birthday Boy

His request was a "strawberry cake with yellow, smiley-face frosting like my jammies." 

     Etienne's birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year.  I got him this cool Birthday Boy button to wear all day but he lost it before we even left the house(what was I thinking anyway?).  Blake made it known to anyone we encountered that it was his brother's big day anyway; and pondered "why is everyone saying it is Thanksgiving first and not Etienne's birthday?"
     The eve of his big day, Etienne's birth mom was on my heart. Before I became E and Zeke's mom, I had this selfish idea that I didn't want to share my children with another family.  But the moment I met my boys, all my insecurities and shallow ideas regarding our birth moms disappeared.  I would give anything now to be able to just spend a half hour with Etienne's first mom.  I would ask her about his arrival.  Did he come out loud and yelling, the way he enters a room now?  Was he rolly-polly, with eye lashes a mile long?  Did she labor alone and afraid or was she surrounded by other women, loving and comforting her?  My prayer for E's birth mom on the Eve of his big day was that if she is alive, that God has blessed her with a peaceful heart.  That maybe, somehow, she knows that her baby is safe and warm tonight and that he is loved so much that it hurts.  

     There are days when I feel like my title, this blog, our home, the van, should all be labeled by him.  "E's Mom, E's house, E's car...." because he demands a lot of time, energy, thought, prayer, worry, resources and more prayer.  But this year, I am most thankful for the struggles that we have had being  Etienne's.  My little boy has led me to God like nothing else.  In undergrad, I had to take 15hrs of philosophy and about the only thing I got out of it was something about how to know good, you must know its counterpart.  Well, being E's mom has brought me to the darkest places in my own heart where the only thing that could fix it was God's grace alone.  And those ugly moments, when I can't do anything but get on my knees, they make the good that much sweeter.  If E hadn't fought me for 2 years to rock at night, I wouldn't be so grateful for the first time he fell asleep on my lap.  There is a birth mama somewhere in Kigali tonight that doesn't get to hold Etienne as he sleeps.  But I'm E's mama now. God has given me 2 years of clenched fists and wiggling,whining so that I can relish the sweetness of him sleeping here on me now.