Lately...

If you would have told me four months ago just how much life would change after having a baby, I would have kindly nodded, silently thinking to myself 'I know, I know...' The thing is.... I had no idea. No idea of the things I would learn and experience each day...

Jesus tells his disciples in Luke 9, that in order to follow him they must deny themselves and take up their cross daily. Daily surrender would become more real to me than I had ever known before. The things I wanted to do for myself would be put on the back burner each and every day. Another life would now depend on it. I would experience exhaustion in a new way and then I would experience God's gift of a supernatural strength that comes over us when we need it most. Daily surrender would take on a new form...

Washing bottles piled up in the sink for the third time that day..

Standing by her crib for an extra 15 minutes, quietly talking to her and waiting for her eyes to slowly blink closed...

Spending the next hour, hour and a half or two hours on an exceptionally good day, picking up around the house, answering emails, doing yet another load of laundry, answering more emails...

Changing endless diapers...

All the while suppressing the desire to lay down on the couch with a cup of coffee (that has been reheated for the fifth time that day) and scroll through the endless feed of images on Pinterest. 

And then if you would have told me four months ago how my view and definition of joy would change after expanding our family, I would have thought "I know, I know." But O God, how your plans for us are so much more full of JOY than anything we could have dreamed up on our own. Eleanor started smiling a while back and she is currently mastering her precious laugh. Those sweet features that God created in her for the purpose of spreading joy. What a gift we have been given. 

And how have my working hours changed post-baby? Well, apart from being so much fewer than I ever imagined, they are more full of projects for Sweet Eleanor's nursery. I recently made a banner to hang in her room with the lyrics from "Father's First Spring" by the Avett Brothers.