I am a Child Of God

This story was sent in by Adrianne Richards. Check out her blogs at: The Richards Family & Snakes and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails

Call it mothers intuition, call it whatever you like, but when I was pregnant with Isaac, I just knew he wasn’t going to last in my body until my due date.  Isaac’s pregnancy was different than the previous one and somehow I just knew. 

It was early Sunday morning when I woke up to go to the bathroom.  I felt normal, achy, tired, uncomfortable, but nothing would lead me to believe it was a different night than all the others.  When I stood up from the toilet to wash my hands, there was a gush of fluid.  I knew immediately that my water had broken and I called for my husband to tell him what had happened.  He quickly and anxiously woke up and got dressed.  I felt very calm and in charge.  I told him to call the babysitters.  While we waited for the babysitter my thoughts just rushed through my mind.  “I’m having another baby.  This wait is over.”  It was four weeks until my due date, too early for the baby to come, but I couldn’t help but feel relieved it was almost over—no more misery.  I went from moments of relief to moments of worry.  What if his lungs weren’t developed yet?  What if he wasn’t ok? 

Labor was uneventful but painful.  I was tired, having arrived at the hospital at 3:00 AM.  Hours later it was time to push and after one hard push Isaac slipped from my body with no problems. 

After the initial relief of delivering my precious baby, it occurred to me that everything was not right with him.  He couldn’t breathe well on his own and required oxygen to assist him.  Everything was a whirlwind.  I watched from across the room, not even given the opportunity to hold him, while they tended to my women parts and tended to his care at the same time. 

It seemed so rushed, loud, busy and then all of the sudden, just as quiet.  Everyone had left the room leaving me and my new baby alone.  Yet, the scene was not the imagined bliss of mother and son meeting for the first time, eyes locking in one peaceful moment where it seems nothing else matters but the two of you connecting your souls.

Instead, he was left lying under a heating lamp, flailing his arms, crying, wondering at the harsh new world he was being introduced to.  I, on the other hand, was lying paralyzed in my bed, wondering where everyone had gone, including Mike, and why no one had given me a chance to hold my son yet. 

I felt helpless.  My heart ached to get out of my bed.  All that separated us was a few steps and yet, I could not move.  My legs were numb.  I was hooked up to IV’s—a fluid drip and pitocin.  My body had been stitched only seconds before, yet I longed to go to him and hold him close to me. 

He continued to cry so I did all I could think of to do:  I sang “I am a Child of God, and He has sent me here, has given me an earthly home, with parents kind and dear.  Lead me, guide me, walk beside me, help me find the way.  Teach me all that I must do, to live with him someday.”  I had sung the song every night for the last nine months.  It was the same song I sang to his big brother at bedtime and I always hoped this baby could hear and know that I was singing to him too.

As I began singing his crying stopped.  The only sound in the room was me singing to him a special message about who he was.  While I couldn’t hold him or be by his side, we communicated to each other in those few seconds.  His silence communicated to me that he knew my voice and the home and Father he had just come from.    

It has been almost four years since this precious experience but I think of that moment often.  I felt through the Spirit as I sang that the words I was singing were true, that he is a child of God.  Sometimes, when I am feeling overwhelmed and tired or annoyed at the shenanigans of my children, it is easy to forget that I am a steward of three precious children who are on loan to me from God.  But then I remember the feeling I felt in that hospital room and know that I need to be more and that I need to treat them as more. 

Even now, almost four years later my son and his brothers request the song I am a Child of God.  They know the words by heart and sing them with me and my husband.  I hope those words will sink deep into their hearts and that they will always call upon them when they need to remember who they belong to and where they came from.    





Thanks Adrianne for sharing! It is a relief to know that we are children of God and that God trusts us to take care of his children.