Happy: The First Time I Met You

I don't even remember meeting my husband. According to him, it was in the Hicks Cafeteria at Grove City College. He was looking for a place to sit, and my roommate and I waved him over. I don't remember it, but I do remember subsequently falling so madly in love that I signed up for two semesters of Old Testament Greek on the off chance that he would notice me. And I do remember the night he asked me to marry him on the porch of my house, and the day I said "I do," and the moment I realized I could no longer remember life without him.

I remember meeting my oldest son, fresh from the womb. I remember thinking "what have we done?" and "can we give him back?" I remember falling in love with him, too, slowly, through the long mid-night hours of newborn need and frailty. Today, when he sits at the kitchen table, telling me about his kindergarten adventures, I cannot remember life without him.

And I remember meeting my other son, eight days old and already being passed to his third primary caregiver.
Did he know then that I would be his forever mother? When I got in the van tonight, he looked at me and told me, "you're my favorite person ever, Mommy." Only three years in my life, and I can't remember: Did I have a life without him?

Now (as you are reading this post, perhaps) I am on the other side of the world, meeting my third son. In his short, toddler life, he has had more loss than most of us will ever have. That's him, in the picture of the picture, but I can't let you see his face because he's not forever ours, yet. I suspect it will take him awhile to learn that; but I am confident that someday (perhaps years down the road) all of us will be unable to imagine life without each other.

And there is the other man, the God-man, whom I don't remember meeting either. He was present always in the moments of my young life, and He was always beautiful. I know, because we are all saved from sin at a moment in time, that I lived without Him. But, praise be to God, I cannot remember.