New Life

My life is unfolding before my eyes. Your life aswell. It has been nearly 17 weeks that we have spent together, though until I heard your heart beat for the first time a couple of weeks ago, it didn't seem real. Your dad can't believe I could truthfully say such a thing. I guess he has been affected by my morning, noon and night sickness too. You are starting to bulge in my stomach, and this thrills me and at the same time makes me a little sad. You are no longer "our little secret," you now have this very strange, public identity protuding under my shirt. One thing I can tell you is that your father and I, are enamoured by you already!

I have started to dream about you, about the exciting life you will lead and the great moments we will share as a family.

I wonder who you will be when you grow up. I pray that I will be a good parent, teacher and friend to you. I wonder how the world you grow up in will have changed from the world I grew up in. I hope that you will have the courage and passion to embrace the world with the adventurous spirit that I have never been able to muster. I hope that you will get to see the world, beyond what I am able to show you. I pray that you will encounter each person you meet with compassion, grace and love. I hope that you inherit your father's sense of humour and love of nature, but also my creativite spirit and love of home. I worry about the world we are bringing you into, I hope we can be examples to you of how the world can be changed for the better. Most of all, I pray that whoever you become, you are happy.

With my multitudes of hopes, prayers and worries for you, the one thing that I am not worried about is being able to love you enough, because I love you beyond reason already and you are just a tiny flicker of life in my belly. I can't wait to meet you dear child, I know that you will be worth the journey.

With love,

Mom

Not a natural disaster...

Way back when, in 1994 when I was in Elementary school I remember hearing about the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that shook the Northridge area of California. I remember seeing the scenes of overpasses dropped onto traffic below, pavement cracked revelaing deep crevasses in the earth and buidlings turned to rubble. I remember thinking, this was devastation. In 1994 California had a population of 32.5 million people. 61 people died in the earthquake and more than 8700 people were injured. Until the recent disaster in New Orleans, it was the most expensive natural disaster in recorded history that ever occured in the US.

Just last week a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit the country of Haiti. Haiti has a population of 9.7 million. More than 200 000 people in Haiti are dead, thousands more are missing and reports of the injured are now in the millions. The images that are burned in my brain are not those of demolished buildings and cracked pavement, they are images of the mass graves, piles of bodies and streets filled with injured.

This is not a natural disaster. This is the result of extreme poverty. God hear our prayers.