Our beautiful angel-in-law, Kelli, is just days away from giving birth to our second granddaughter.
What excitement at our house! The anticipation of seeing this precious baby face and counting all those fingers and toes can't be measured. She and Travis are busy preparing the nursery, stocking diapers and packing overnight bags for the hospital.
In the meantime, Leroy and I are keeping busy with another kind of Kid Watch. Our cashmere nannies are growing heavy with kids as well!
There is much to do in preparation on the farm for their anticipated arrival. While winter days in Texas are usually delightful, the nights can be chilly and sometimes downright bitter, so our job as Happy Goat Herders is to make ready the stable:
Fences to keep the predators out...And the babies in!
Heat Lamps for Warmth,
Mangers overflowing with fragrant Hay, and, of course
Alerting Daisy, our faithful Goat Guardian to the impending arrival ...
Soon the birthing pains will begin. As mothers we endure the unthinkable, bear the unbearable to bring new life into this fragile existence. I watch Kelli cradle her belly, the dwelling place of her baby sweet. Her frame is distended, skin drawn taut in protection of the unborn.
All mothers experience this miraculous stretching, expanding of self to make room for the frailness of love. We acknowledge the pangs of birth, embrace the stretching, the pulling of ourselves to the outer edges of all we think possible...
The pain leaves stretchmarks. On skin and on soul. We will never be the same, the marks, the scars are but a breath-taking signature of life's design.
I know mom bore the stretchmarks of leaving us too soon. She held to life when medicine and science said it shouldn't be. Mom stretched in a gift of grace, letting God extend Himself in her life. Even through the pain and brutal weakness the cancer caused her, she endured to the outer edge of selflessness, bearing love and hope to each of us.
Never deny the beauty of the stretchmarks in your life, the work of stretching, expanding, enduring. They are the signs you are full to bursting with Love and Grace,
Always in Grace, Jane
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