it's possible.

photo credit: jocelyn k brown photography

I was afraid to have a second baby.

Afraid for all of the normal reasons like will she be healthy and can we afford her and will I ever sleep again? But secretly, my biggest fear of all was “Can I love her as much as I love Caleb?”

I didn’t think it was an irrational question. A little inappropriate? Yes, perhaps. But not irrational. After all, the love you experience when you first have a child ... when you first enter into that once mysterious realm of motherhood … it’s so intense. So unique. So incomparable.

And the more you get to know your first child – the more you get to watch him grow into an extraordinary, multi-faceted little person – you are even more sure that your capacity to love is maxed out. He owns all of your heart. It’s full. You’re done for. Well beyond capacity for sure.

I really don’t get how it works – I REALLY don’t - but I couldn’t have been more wrong about this. It IS possible to love again in the same crazy, limitless way.

The moment the ultrasound tech said it was a girl, it was like I was given a part of my heart that I never knew belonged to me. But when I received it, I thought “Ohhhhhh. THIS is what I was waiting for. This is what it’s like to feel whole.”

And then when my ears first heard her cry and my eyes first saw her face, I felt it. The greatest, biggest love in my heart. The love that didn’t only make me a mom again, but made me her mom. Because her mom AND his mom was who I was created to be.

And finally seeing both of my kids together, the biggest and best parts of my heart, it really felt so humbling. So much like I didn’t deserve the miracles that were given to me, but also like I didn’t want to question it. Instead I wanted to WORSHIP and PRAISE and be THANKFUL. Because God loves His children and He gives grace.

I don’t understand it. I don’t know how it’s possible to love each kid with ALL of your heart and then love them even more the next day. It’s beautiful how God gives us that ability, though. It’s beautiful how He created things to be beautiful without us even knowing why we see beauty in those things. Like the sun melting into the blue ocean. Or bright pink peonies poking through the dirt. Or that rush in your soul called love.

He puts the greatest love in our hearts for our children. He makes it possible. And through that love, He gives us a breathtaking glimpse of how He feels about us.

Each and every one of us.