The Angel Appeared to Joseph...

I prayed like I had never prayed before. For the baby. For Dominique. I enrolled us in every baby newsletter on the internet. I bought prenatal vitamins like they were a commodity. I couldn’t sleep. I was so excited that I couldn’t even think straight. Then it occurred to me.

I can really screw this up.

I wouldn’t be the worst father in the world, but I had seen too many teens injured by their relationships with their fathers in my work as a youth minister. I could never do that to my son or daughter. Or could I? How many other fathers start out with the right intentions? How many other fathers start out thinking that they are going to do things better than any other father on the planet? How was I different?

I started working with my door shut. I couldn’t talk to anyone because I might actually blab about this thing before we were ready to talk about it. The whole time I prayed.

Then I remembered the off-handed comment I had made a month earlier. God was preparing us for something huge. Then it occurred to me. Our mutual act of self-sacrifice was the most concrete act of love we had displayed in our marriage. We had lived the law of the gift in our own lives and it had borne fruit!