Worth the risk

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

I first read the Four Loves, and the above quote by C.S. Lewis, in college. I was struck then by the truth within this statement, and the years I’ve walked on this earth since have only more firmly confirmed the truth within it. And it is a truth that kept coming back to me as the Lord stirred the desire in Jeff’s and my heart for another child.

To love is to risk. To love is to open your heart to the certainty of being wrung and to the distinct possibility of being broken.

This is no more true for us, us with our genetic predispositions, than for anybody else. The only difference for us is we know what some of the specific risks are. We know facts and figures and probabilities. While most go into love blind, unsure of in which ways they might be wrung or broken, we distinctly know some of the ways in which this might happen. And yet when it comes to the risks, there are no certainties. There are merely probabilities.

However, there are certainties we know – beyond a shadow of a doubt. There is a God and He is sovereign over the womb. And perhaps most importantly, He is good. Now the fact that He is good does not in anyway guarantee that the road ahead will be absent of heartbreak or tragedy. It does not in anyway guarantee that we will not stand over a too small coffin placed in a grave dug far too soon. Our good Father has walked the road of tragedy and loss before us, knows the searing pain of losing a child more intimately and fully than any of us. But any tragedy that might befall? Will have tenderly passed through His hands first. If the Lord breaks our hearts, He breaks with care and compassion and precision that foresees the harvest to come.

And so, as the desire for another whispered and then grew louder…we could not but say yes. To partner with the Great Artist in the creation of another soul? To invite Him to continue writing the story of our family? To walk where we know we would drown without His presence and provision? Oh what a privilege – oh what an adventure!

And so, without further ado, we would like to introduce you to the newest member of the family. This little one has been christened with the womb name “Sweet Pea” by her big sister Ellie. I must admit, it is quite difficult to resist the temptation to refer to Sweet Pea with feminine pronouns. Jeff has fully surrendered to the temptation; I try to resist. We are so accustomed to referring to our children as “the girls” that an addition of a boy at this point will require a dramatic change in the family vernacular (not to mention color scheme).

Sweet Pea is expected to make an entrance in this world in late April, which means in December we will get to learn much more about the one God has blessed us with. Thank you for continuing to surround our family with prayer and love. May we all get glimpses of the One of unfathomable Glory as we follow Him down this road.