So the baby is about the size of an avocado right now...

...I like it when my dad makes guacamole...

and desperation, and hopelessness, and loneliness...

It makes my heart so heavy to see that there are people in this world... high school students, college students, young men in Iraq or Pakistan... who have gotten to such a horrible place in their life where they feel that their only alternative is to kill others...

I told Tilden last night that I feel we have become immune to these mass killings... that when Columbine happened several years ago, I was in shock and was glued to the TV to try to figure it all out... now, when twice as many people are killed, it seems like a horrible thing, but almost a part of life. I don't want something that horrific to be a part of life... but so many people in other parts of the world deal with it on a daily basis... it really is a part of their life. That's not okay...it shouldn't be a part of life for anyone. But yet here we are...

So I've been having these subconscious thoughts since I have been pregnant, thoughts that have only turned into words today. I just keep wondering if it is selfish for me and Tilden to have a child of our own. I mean, there are so many children already born out there who don't have someone to love them and don't have someone to take care of them. I have always said that I am interested in adoption, and I was even looking into the Mecklenburg County foster care system when I found out I was pregnant, which I took as a cue that I was not meant to be a foster parent at this point in my life, but that I am to raise my own child. So then I think, why does God want us to raise our own child? Yes, there will be countless joys and blessings that come with parenthood, but is that selfishness as well? Maybe not... maybe God blesses us with the gift of a child... allowing us to bask in that joy...

But the only possible conclusion I can come to right now as to why God wants us to have a child is to raise it up not only love God (that can't be enough), but to want to serve God and make God's world a better place...to raise a child who can make a difference in the world even more so than me and Tilden... a child who can carry on the fight when we are no longer able. Any other reason for having a child is just selfishness, right?

So that is what I pray. That I may see even the smallest joys of having this life grow inside and outside of me... so that I can truly appreciate being a part of this miracle of God... and that we may raise this child to truly be a child of God... a child who not only see the beauty of this world, but the injustices as well... and who is not content to live inactively alongside them.