I wanted to share a story from early, early in this pregnancy, before I even knew I had conceived.
Some weeks before, I had met a wonderful friend named Angela at my homeschool meeting. Usually, I’m shy there and eager to get home, but one particular time, I brought Indy, a tricky situation. We inevitably ended up outside in the hall where Indy met Abby, Angela’s then almost 2 daughter. They were so cute taking turns saying, “Abby!” It totally reminded me of Eva and Wall-E.
It turned out that Angela’s older daughter was enrolled in the same weekly P.E. class program we were, so Angela and I got to visit a little every week for the following eight weeks.
Well, at the second to last P.E. class, Angela had brought a copy of the publication Above Rubies to give to me, since someone had given it to her, but she already had the same issue from her own subscription. If you are not familiar with Above Rubies, it is a usually quarterly, donation-based, ministry magazine, free to everyone. Their sort of tagline, taken from their website is, “Encouraging women in their high calling as wives, mothers and homemakers.”
So, I brought the magazine home and later that evening read it cover to cover (just about). Most of the families featured in the articles had at least 4 children, but the majority had many more. It was interesting to hear the stories of these women’s journeys to coming to want, and pursue, having large families. I was left feeling that to have more babies would be wonderful and simply, not that big of a deal (as I have become used to people being critical of families with more than 2 or 3 children). Not only that, but also I felt supported in the great sacrifice I have personally made for my children. All of that, on top of my, always present, underlying, extreme adoration of my own children, I felt sorta like having another baby. Weird – I literally asked the Lord, “Did you have Angela give me this magazine as a way of preparing me to find out I’m pregnant?” I wondered in the quiet moments all weekend long …
… And then a pregnancy test on Monday confirmed God’s sweet grace for this mama.











