introduction: our journey to you
My sweet Magdeline Joy,
Your nickname, “Mighty Maggie,” was given to you shortly after you were born. Hundreds of people prayed for you and praised God for the strength we saw in your sweet little body as you fought to live. But this wasn’t the beginning of our journey with you. You are the product of prayers that came long before we knew we could have you and long after we got the good news we were pregnant. Our season of infertility taught me to wait with hope and to go to God with my pain, longing, frustration, and disappointment. It taught me that to suppress my sadness was to also suppress my joy. It was ok to feel ALL the things. God used you to teach me that faithfulness is sometimes first being faithless and just falling into your Savior’s arms as He pours out HIS faith into your barren heart and your barren womb. I also learned that He wasn’t ashamed of me or thought of me as a “bad Christian.” He just loved me and longed for me to come to Him. He was in it with us. He was for us.
Your birthday was a surprise and was surrounded by trauma and worry. However, what’s more important was that it was surrounded by the prayers of precious people, some you may never know this side of Heaven. Those precious souls prayed you into this world. While we don’t understand why our journey to you was so different than we imagined, we know it’s been marked with hope. We can’t wait to see what God is going to do with your life. He’s put it on my heart to record your story and to also spend time in His word and in the stories of strong women of faith in order to mold and guide our prayers for you. These women, while not perfect, were used in mighty ways for the Kingdom. Little girl, you were born into a global pandemic and a time that has been marked by social injustice, oppression, fear, and conflict. I have no idea what your world will be like but I have so much hope for you.
The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.
— Psalm 126:3
I love you dearly.
