A Baby Changes Everything

Today, I’m sharing a favorite post of mine that I first shared last Christmas season…with a few new tweaks.  I’ve read it myself throughout the year, because it is such a reminder to me of what God did in my marriage and ultimately in my life.  May you all reflect on God’s work in your marriages this season as we celebrate the baby who changed everything.  Merry Christmas!

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

As I sat at church, surrounded by family, a beautiful solo was performed of the song, A Baby Changes Everything.  It tells the Christmas story from the perspective of Mary.

If you’ve never heard it, stop now and watch this…

I heard that song for the first time a couple of years ago and it moved me to tears.  Why?  Because I’ve never related to Mary more than I do now that I’m a mother, and in some ways, her story tells my story.  For me, a baby also changed everything.

God used His Son, coming as a baby, to change the world. 

God used the birth of my son to change my life.

When I was 6 months pregnant with my first child, I returned from a weekend away to find that my husband, Dave, was convinced our marriage was over.  The deterioration of our relationship didn’t happen that quickly, but the realization of where we were after numbing months of grad school, demanding jobs, constant travel, and separate lives, was a sudden shock.  What followed were weeks filled with lots of pain, lots of tears, lots of counseling, lots of talking and no change.

On the bitter cold morning of February 5th, 2007, I started labor and called my husband on his cell at work.  We were in such a place that I wasn’t even sure he would pick up.  He did.  Eleven hours of labor, 9 and a half inches of dilation, a few moments of panic and one cesarean section later….a baby changes everything.

We were suddenly no longer two individuals trying to work out a broken marriage. 

We were a family.  A mom.  A dad.  A child.

As I slept in a recovery room, drugged from an emergency c-section, Dave stood in a hospital nursery with the hand of his firstborn son wrapped around his finger.  He said he knew in that moment that he needed to stay in our marriage.  He didn’t know how that was going to work, but it was the first step in letting love & forgiveness cover over the resentment & bitterness that had built in his heart.  He was a father now.  He had a son, and he knew that son needed a family.

A baby changes everything.

Up until then, I’d been feverishly working on my career.  Collecting my MBA diploma the same weekend as I’d conceived this new child.  I was putting most of my time, my energy, my self, into my job, the rest in my degree (note all the “my’s”).  I had wanted a child while at the same time not knowing if I really wanted to be a mother.  Was I willing to give up all that I had worked for?  For the weeks leading up to the birth, my plan went from 3 months maternity leave, to six months maternity leave, to a resignation letter.  I knew that I was about the lose the thing I really wanted most.   I wanted to be a mother to this baby.  I wanted to be a wife to my husband.

A baby changes everything.

The months, the weeks, the days before this child came into our lives, we had no answers.  Dave and I had both come to the end of ourselves and for the first time in our immature Christian faith, we realized the only place left to turn was to God.  We had asked for Jesus to be in our lives long before, but then left him on the wayside as we continued to chase our dreams, our plans, our way.  That had left us broken as individuals, in the middle of marital destruction, our lives in chaos.  God finally made us see what He was offering in His son Jesus, if only we choose to follow Him.

My whole life is turned around.  I was lost, but now I’m found.  A baby changes everything.

Almost 6 years later, Dave and I have 4 sons now and our 5th child due in March.  The birth of each child has changed us.  God has used our children, perhaps more than any other agent in our lives, to grow us.  But, nothing has changed us like the baby born to Mary that first Christmas night.

How do you relate more to Mary as a mother?  Has a baby changed everything in your life?

© 2012, Danielle Peters. All rights reserved. Love it? Print, email, pin, tweet or share but please don’t use my work without permission. {Copyright Fancy Little Things. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this article or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.}