Top 13 of 2013, Day #7: First Breath

Day #7: July 12, 2013

I don't have kids of my own, but I have been blessed to welcome lives with so many of my good friends. With so many little ones coming into the world, sometimes you take it for granted.

And sometimes you don't. Christmas, for example. And also July 12.

Bennett Russell was one of the times we absolutely didn't.

After a very long year, Ben's arrival felt like the first time any of us could shift focus on what might've been, what could've been, to really appreciate what was.

My friends have been stronger than I'm sure even they could've expected, putting their faith into something much greater than us, but so much was NOT said in one year. So many times you catch yourself about to say something that you take back, unsure of how it will sound if you say it. So many questions about what is right, when is it the appropriate time for this or that. I'm not really sure how they did it, except that I look at Abbie and realize they had to. There was no option to just shut their eyes and sleep for a week or a year or a lifetime because Abbie wouldn't let them.

She's given us a lot of gifts in the last few years. I believe that was one of them. I can't put myself in their shoes, but I'm pretty confident that Abbie gave them a reason to wake up in the morning.

It was a tense week leading up to Ben's arrival. Besides Sarah's nerves as his due date approached, I was watching the calendar hoping he'd make his entrance before I got on a plane headed to Disney World. I know my presence in the state made no difference to him or his new family, but I also know I wouldn't have thought of anything but them if he was still living inside Sarah when I landed in Orlando.

The night he was born, Sarah and I were casually texting about...well, probably any number of random things, but I can assure you none of them were "I AM IN LABOR."  She was home. Russ was sleeping off pain killers from a dental procedure. And then the texts stopped with a vague message about heading to the hospital.

I wanted to set up my phone with a special text alert so that I would definitely wake up overnight for any updates from Russ. I was going to be prepared, I was going to be attentive, and I was going to be there for my friends.

I didn't even get a chance to apply the updated text alerts before Russ's message heralding Ben's arrival came through.

My favorite new siblings!

Sarah, with no time to consider pain killers OR what she was about to endure, once again exhibited both mental and physical strength that I can't even imagine. The headline from Russ was confusing - it seemed impossible that Sarah and I were texting casually less than two hours before, and now she had twice as many kids as she did the last time I talked to her - but Ben had arrived. Faster than his mom could get some drugs to make it easier, but also faster than his mom could worry about anything that could possibly go wrong.

So many thoughts that I just can't put into a blog. Some of them I shared with Sarah and Russ, some of them I cried about privately, some of them make me even stronger in my faith that a higher power is looking out for us all.

Ben was born at just the right moment. For the first time in exactly one year, we were finally able to take our first breaths.

Meeting Ben for the 1st time