got.to.testify.

We made a "bottom of the ninth" decision this morning. It was 8:15 and our little feller was done with his morning bottle.  The three of us were hanging out at our kitchen island, tossing around ideas for the day (well D wasn't so much tossing around ideas as tossing everything he could get his saliva-soaked hands on, onto the floor), when my hubby threw out, "Why don't we go to my family's church?" We had been putting off a visit to his family's church until we could wrap our heads around the logisitcs required for a lengthy service at a church 50 minutes away with an infant. I'm not sure if I was taking the title of this blog literally this morning or what, but with forty minutes to get us all (and the dog) out the door and on the road, I replied, "Sure, let's do it!" We tore around our house like tazmanian devils, grunting, sweating and running up and down three flights of stairs more than a football team at summer camp. Alas, D locked in, dog loaded up, enough stuff for a month trip packed, and two sodas secured, we rolled out.

The reason I'm writing about this today (instead of Part 2 of "My Favorite Things" or another of the zillion topics clamoring in my head) is because I'm still flush with a tsunami-size wave of gratitude and therefore I've got to testify. You see, B (my hubby) and I waited nearly nine years for our little feller. The story contained in those years will have to wait for another day. But throughout that heart-wrenching leg of our journey, we would visit the family church whenever in town and just feel a sense of peace, of home. Our family and the people there were like a quilt to our tattered selves--warming the cold places in us, reminding us of what we believe and that when our arms were too weary, they'd raise theirs in our stead. We shed a lot of tears in that house. Offered a lot of prayers to a God we couldn't always feel or see or trust.

Today we returned to that church with our precious boy, and something deep within me felt mended. There's something healing about returning to a place tied to memories of great pain, but now with inexpressable joy. It's like traveling back to a battlefield and instead of seeing remnants of war, witnessing seas of grass and flowers and trees...life. Today I'm grateful for it all: the journey, that church, family, friends, our son, my man, a God who is faithful, new seasons and old. There was a time when you'd barely get a chuckle out of me for the weight was too heavy, my soul too ravished, contorted in pain. But I got my laugh back...and more. And while I don't know what tomorrow holds...today, I am grateful. That is why I had to testify. Can I get an amen??