3-D Ultrasound of Timothy

This just in, this afternoon! Timothy will be here in less than a month, it seems. He could come anytime between next week and next month. Hannah went in today for another ultrasound, and this time it was the newer three dimensional-type...isn't he the cutest thing you ever saw?! He's makin' a "mad face", because the nurse jiggled him around and he didn't like it.

I found myself sitting on my front porch today, the realization dawning on me that it was a God-kissed day. The sun warming my shoulders, the sound of the waterfall that pours into the pond, caught up on all my work, my knitting in my hand, prayers for all of Harvest's new babies on my heart, a letter from my oldest son telling us that God is granting him favor and promotion, partly through his dad, and he knows that.

Tim emailed our son's drill sergeant awhile back - something most parents never do - and told him that we were praying for him, and that he could do "anything he wanted" to our son. (!!)

Drill sergeant, three inches from my son's nose, shouting to Josiah: "Atchley, you are different. I like you. Your dad wrote me and said I could do anything I wanted to you."

Josiah to DI: "That sounds exactly like this recruit's father, SIR!"

...and then he got a promotion, for his intensity and skill. Josiah said, and I quote from his letter, "as usual, God gives me favor through my father."

...and then he asked us to write out Scriptures for him, so that he can streamline his devotions and fit them in with his letter reading time.

Pinch me. All this, and Jesus too. Try and tell me that grace isn't the central theme of the gospel, and thus, the central theme of our lives here on earth...try and tell me that life is about something other than the grace of God, and I'll think you a potential heretic. It is such heresy, to not believe in a God of All Grace, who gives More Grace, and who sits on a throne of Grace, surrounded by a rainbow, one of the symbols of Grace!

This "living of the gospel" thing is the hardest, simplest, profoundest, most wonderful thing I've ever experienced in my life, and ever will experience.

Oh, nothing but the blood of Jesus! Not my good looks or education or work ethic or any such thing...only Jesus, all for Jesus, because of Jesus.