It was a hot hot day in July as I laid with your sister in my arms, also hot due to a fever. The moments that came soon after are a horrific blur and yet still burn bright in my mind.
Shortly after checking her temperature, you’re big sister Darcey had a febrile seizure and stopped breathing right in front of my eyes.
After what seemed like ages, paramedics were finally on scene and rushed the both of us to the emergency room.
The days to follow were a series of doctors visits, late nights and never ending hospital bills. Stress fell on our house pretty thick after that and my body wasn’t able to process it well at all.
The week after the ER visit, I began I to feel something I hadn’t felt in a little while – pregnancy.
I took a test in the thick of the stress hoping for an answer I could stomach.
“Positive.”
Very faint but very real.
I lost my breath and became so dizzy I lost my balance. I needed to sit down.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell your dad just yet, so I waited for the right time to bring up the literally breath-taking news that grew within me.
A few days later, we were all adjusting to the idea of another life being added to ours and though unsure of what that would look like, we hoped for health and strength in the meantime. It wasn’t but a week or so later that a rush came over me and we lost what we had never planned. Never planned, always welcomed, always wanted.
August was another month of chaos and sickness in our house but much less stressful than July. As I sorted bill after bill during the afternoons as your sisters napped, I quietly thanked the Lord for knowing what I thought was best for our family and welcoming a life into heaven before earth. Thankful because I felt incapable and unprepared to care for such a life.
Son, for the first time as a mother, I almost felt relieved. Forgive me.
A few days shy of a month from the previous unexplained episode, I began to fill my womb call out once again.
“Positive.”
Not faint, not shy, not silent but bold.
Maverick, my son, that was the beginning of you.
With a peace unexplained I told your daddy immediately although with hesitation as we were just in this same place 3 weeks prior.
How could this have happened so fast and why did I still feel so unfit, unprepared and unworthy?
Nevertheless, you grew.
Months seemed like days – I blinked and saw 12 weeks already! Too eager to wait, we decided to find out your gender early. I still remember reading the results to your dad over the phone, weeping as I screamed, “BOY! It’s says BOY!”
Tears rolling down my face, still shook to my core that I was unworthy of you, unworthy of a son, unworthy of another wonderful life.
It wasn’t long after that we named you. Your dad had waited 3 long years to give you his name – Maverick Price. We knew right then that we had always known you.
Your growth brought sickness and weakness to my body but it also brought strength and joy! Never aware my heart could swell as it did when I felt your strong kicks and slow rolls against the walls of my belly.
“He’s so low!”
The words out of everyone’s mouth just days before you arrived. You seemed to be my biggest yet and although I was eager to have you out of me, the day you prepared yourself to be brought earth-side, I was scared to death.
How will we manage another life? How will we care for one more right now? Your sisters, still small, seemed to need me more than ever and I felt I gave them so little of me already. I feared your arrival son. Forgive me.
You alerted me strongly at 4:30pm on Saturday April 28th, 2018. Yes. The one Saturday a month your dad had to be at work! As I labored at home with your Granny close by my side, the flashbacks of birth hit me hard. It was though you spoke right to me, “ready or not, here I come!”
And come you did at 8:00pm that same day. The pushes leading up to that moment were the hardest I’d ever encountered – my head pressed hard against your dads, with all my might I push and pulled you up from the water.
Eyes soaked with tears, sweat and relief, I stared at what I feared most of all. You were blue.
Your cord wasn’t pulsing and although my midwife rubbed hard on your little body, you lay limp and breathless on my chest. The motion around me was that of a well-oiled machine and the presence of the God we serve surrounded me as I breathed in the only comfort He could offer.
You see son, I had done my job, now it was time for Him to do His.
Minutes seemed like days but as they breathed for you once again, we heard you gasp on your own and then breath your first breath.
They called your birth at 8:03pm.
With a cry full of fight you let out a roar! Chills filled the air and we all let out a breath of relief as we welcomed you, our son earth-side.
I have never felt joy like I did in that moment. I have never felt peace like I did right then! So thankful, so proud, so humbled… but still unworthy.
The days that have followed that pivotal moment have been the best days of my life. My heart has never felt so full and so honored – so grateful of what was created and designed for my life.
Son, you have been redemption in the purest form from the start. You have been a light to our darkness from the moment we heard your heartbeat; the calm to our storm and the joy in our song.
Oh son, it has always been you.
You who reminded me that though I feel unworthy, I am still chosen and though I seem ill-prepared, I am still enough.
I will never be anything less than grateful for your life and I will never be anything less than bewildered as to why the Lord chose me for you!
Oh Maverick, I’ve waited my whole life to love you and I’ll live the rest of it doing my very best to live up to exactly what you deserve.
All my love,
Mom 🧡
mamabithell 