One year ago today, we met our Keogena Na’Airah Lynelle.

to read Keogena’s birth story and watch her birth video, click here

In that moment when you see your brand new baby for the first time, after months of wondering and waiting and hours of working and wallowing you finally meet them. You see it. This impossibly tiny face. This perfect little body. You realize in a single moment while you felt you were working so hard, for those ten months (yes, 40 weeks is 10 months. Not nine.) you really didn’t do anything besides carry on life as usual with a little more effort while a miracle was carried out inside of you. Labor is hard work, no doubt, even more so if you decide to feel every minute of it. But I never feel closer to the Lord than I have in the moments I’ve brought my children to my chest for the first time.

It was He, not me.

I knew instantly and for certain my body was designed to do this. My skin was made to stretch for this. My organs were made to shift for this. My chest was made to create life-sustaining milk for this. My mind was made to overcome pain for this. My memory was made to forget pain for this. This was no mistake. This was not chance. This was by intricate, creative, intentional, miraculous design.

And in this first year, the only thought I have weaving through the weeks and months that make up the 365 days, 52 weeks, 12 months is this: God is undeniable. How babies learn to transition from that warm, dark, quiet, cramped hot tub of a womb to the cold, loud, big bright world is a miracle in itself. Then they learn to drink milk that just comes out of your body, round the clock exactly when they need it-that’s a miracle too. Then a crazy thing happens; they just start growing. Their bodies just start stretching and filling and those little alien legs become perfect little roll filled things. They become strong enough to hold their head up, then roll, then sit up, then crawl, then walk. They become smart enough to babble, then direct you, then identify things, then talk. And we can be tricked into thinking it’s something we did, you know? Because we read the parenting books, of course. And we got the activity mat. And we showed them the black and white flash cards and we remembered tummy time.

We read them Goodnight Moon and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, we said mama and dada approximately seven hundred times a day and we fed them. Oh, how we fed them. But it wasn’t us. It was Him. He brings us these precious gifts and He shows us how to get through every step and surprise they’ll bring.

And friends, now we are here. All the intense difficulties of her first year are behind us and our girl is chasing her big brother down the hallway with a wooden teapot. She is incredibly healthy. She is wildly smart. She is an outpouring of joy. And she is one.

God is undeniable. On Keogena’s first birthday, beneath a white balloon, I close my eyes and say Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord.

(the first photo taken of our lady, a whole 2 hours old.)

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