I'm going to be a mother? Me?Whelp, I have the morning (ahem, can strike anytime) sickness and bone tired fatigue to prove it. And, of course, the sonogram of our little blobby alien love that they assure me is a developing human.We’d been trying for a couple months, so when that second pink line started inking itself across the pregnancy test, I thought I would be ecstatic. Instead: terror.All of my “trying to get pregnant” worries (What if I can’t get pregnant? What if there’s something wrong with me? What if there’s something wrong with Ryan?) were supplanted with new sickening fears: What if we lose the baby? What if the baby is sick? What if, what if, what if?I have friends and friends of friends who have struggled for so long to get pregnant, or whose pregnancies haven’t lasted. I’ve read about infertility and miscarriage and the long struggle of hoping for the chance to be a parent.I feel premature in my celebration. I feel undeserving of the double pink line. I want to be sensitive in my sharing. I never knew I could be this scared.But then I remember my favorite quote from Ann Voskamp,

“I know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I've seen the hungry and the guns that go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives…Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn't rescue the suffering, the converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring the fullest Light to all the world.” One Thousand Gifts

I only deepen the wound of the world when I fail to give thanks for squiggly sonogram screenshots and mayonnaise-craving embryos (the struggle is real).All the good things that a good God gives.This may be the only time I’m pregnant. The pregnancy may not last full term.But right now, I will choose joy.I will choose the hard discipline of quieting the voices of doubt and doom.Ann Voskamp also writes, “Awakening to joy awakens to pain.”And isn’t that the story of parenthood? A mesh of joy and pain, worry and hope?So today, I am humbled to say that I AM PREGNANT. OUR FAMILY IS GROWING. God is literally doing work in me.Ryan and I have chosen the word BRAVE to guide us through this pregnancy journey. We pray that we are brave enough to hope, to be fully invested in the little life inside me. We seek to be brave enough to hold out hope for our friends who are still trying. To be brave enough to enter their pain and mourning. We want to be brave enough to ask for help, to admit we don’t have it all together. To admit that we’re scared.Most of all, we want to be brave enough to choose joy and to invite others into our joy.Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there and I pray for strength and comfort for those who are wishing and waiting and hoping to someday be a mother.