A Week With Walt

It has been an amazing week with little Walt! Julie and I are so excited to have him home with us and to see his sweet little personality come out in so many wonderful ways. He is very laid-back and doesn't cry all that much, but when he does he wants to be sure that you hear him. He has been keeping us entertained with his cute little faces and movements and we are having so much fun loving him and taking care of him. He has adjusted to life at home very well and we are so blessed to have him.
As many of you know, there are many emotions that are tied to Walt's arrival in our world. We are so overjoyed to finally be able to meet him and be so in love with him, but there is still the sadness of our loss of Magdalena. There have been a lot of reminders of her in all of this and we miss her terribly. At the same time, we want to be able to fully celebrate Walt and show him that he is loved immensely. He will one day know all about his big sister, but for now he is the star of the show. As you can imagine, this tug of seemingly conflicting emotions is sometimes very difficult, but we are so happy to have known both of them and to be able to call them ours.

I believe, at least for me, that one of the blessings of going through such a tremendous loss and dealing with the ensuing grief is that God uses it to, in a sense, expand our emotions. I had never known anything close to the grief of losing sweet Magdalena and the depths of my feelings of sadness and hurt were profound. I am so thankful that God kept both Julie and me strong and continuing to trust Him as our source of comfort and joy and satisfaction through it all. He is so gracious in His steadfast love for us! At the same time, I found my desire for and actual feelings of joy and happiness even greater than ever before. I have noticed that my desires to experience deep, true worship have multiplied and I often find myself in tears at a simple worship song that is playing in my head. These are not tears of sadness, but of profound delight in the God who loves us so extravagantly. We know that sweet Magdalena is with Jesus and is worshipping Him perfectly as we are here trying to do the same, although not so well. I find tremendous delight in this and I smile at the thought. In many ways, Walt simply reminds me of this and I am even more joyful and more thankful for our sweet little man. What a blessing!

Little Walt has brightened our lives in more ways than we could have imagined. We have had a great first week with him and we look forward to many more. Please keep us in your prayers!

More to come...