Mommy, is it the 27?

Today was Brayden's birthday. He turned 5 today and is growing up so fast. In the last couple months he's begun to be a little walking, talking calendar. The first thing he does in the morning is announce the date. He hasn't gotten down the whole "th" "st" "rd" part of it. So it's sounds something like this, "Today's the 27, and Sunday will be the 30." I enjoy it so much that I find myself saying it wrong on accident and on purpose. I was watching him play with his cousin, Aiden, tonight as he opened his presents and began thinking about how unique of a creation we all are. If you ask, he remembers that Mother's Day was May 10. Don't worry, I checked, he was right. I'm the mother and my answer was "in May I think..."

He's such a little character. Loves math and has begun adding double digits in his head. People ask me why I didn't send him on to kindergarten this year. The truth is because he would fail coloring. He can't understand why anyone would want to do that. Just won't color a thing. When I pick him up at church, everyone's little pictures are on the door waiting to show mommy and daddy with pride. His is always the blank one. Or if it's a teacher that doesn't know him, she thinks she's lost one. I know better!

Well he had a great Birthday tonight. And as I headed off to Walgreen's for yet another prescription tonight (this time for chest spasms), all I could think about is how God made him exactly the way he is for some special purpose. I pray he finds it by seeking God's will over his own long before I did. Oh, how much easier his life could be.

You see, he saved my life. I had been sampling church for a year or so casually on the weekends. I liked Saturday night church because you could get your church in and still go "out". See, even though I was going, in my mind I was just "chalking up credits" with God for being there. Church was just something I had added into my calendar. I was not surrendered, still working on "strong" too much to be surrendered. Living my life in sin and not feeling particularly bothered about changing it.

It was like perfume. Spray a little church on you, you'll smell better & maybe no one will know what you were doing the night before. Then be on your way. I was on a path of total destruction. It's doubtful that I'd be here writing this now if it weren't for him. Exactly a month before I became pregnant, I had been laying in a hospital bed at Baylor having smashed my face on a 20 foot box truck after a hockey game. They pieced me back together and gave me a 10% chance that the left side of my face would ever work again because there had been so much nerve damage. It took my mom over 2 hours in the shower at the hospital just to get the dried blood out of my hair once I could get out of bed. Little pieces of fiberglass surfaced from wounds on my face for the next two weeks because they had been so deeply embedded. Thankfully no one else was hurt.

When I learned 6 weeks later that I was pregnant with him, everything changed immediately. I got serious. There was so much more on the line than before. I now was totally responsible for raising another human being. I always knew he was a boy, too. Stick turned pink, and my first though was, "I always wanted a boy." People thought I was crazy or that I was just taking the 50/50 shot, but that wasn't it. I knew. Never even looked at one girl name in the books...

God chose to bless me with what I always wanted in the middle of my darkest days away from Him. It took Brayden to bring me back to Him. Yeah, I had been at church for a awhile, but hadn't taken any of it home with me. So, as I look at him today, I see my little boy growing up so fast. I also see a boy God chose to give to another one of his children to bring her home. Thank you, Brayden and Happy Birthday! And, Thank You God for seeing past who I was, to who you created me to be and choosing me for his mother.