Children are a gift of the Lord

We have been enjoying a two-day holiday here in Ecuador - it's called Carnaval, always celebrated on Monday and Tuesday, making it a big four-day weekend for most people. The main tradition during this holiday is to throw water on unsuspecting people as they pass by your house, car or corner! They call it "playing carnaval" - we have found that it's usually best to stay inside during this weekend unless you really want to get wet!

And the nice thing is that Santi has been home (even though he has been on call for the computer department at HCJB, thankfully he hasn't received any calls so far!) and we've been working on various projects around the house.

One of our main projects was to take down the Christmas tree! Yea, I know, we're well into February and the tree is still up! I guess we kind of took a late Christmas this year - considering that we didn't get the tree up until Dec 21. And then it wasn't the typical Christmas for us - one that didn't include all the food (yes, I guess we did get to eat the turkey before running off to the hospital) and gifts and guests and glitter and events.

However, today as I was taking off the ornaments, I was reminded of a very special gift this year. Some dear friends recently sent us Nathan's very first Christmas tree ornament - a bronze set of baby shoes that says "Baby's First Christmas 2007". When I put the ornament on the tree, I hadn't noticed that the back of it had a verse from the book of Psalms in the Bible. But today in taking down the ornaments I noticed the verse which says:

Psalm 127:3 Children are a gift of the Lord . . .

This year, we may not have had all that goes with a traditional Christmas, but we received a very special GIFT indeed. Nathan came into our lives on Christmas day and we could never imagine our lives without him. In six short weeks, he has filled our lives with wonder, love, joy, and happiness. (and dark circles under our eyes due to lack of sleep -but that's a given with a newborn in the house I guess!). This verse also reminded me that the name Nathan means "Gift of God". (I guess I could start a theme of "gifts" here).

I know that none of this is necessarily anything new and I'm sure that all of you who are parents out there have already come to this realization - the fact that our children are a gift from God. For me today, it was just a special moment as I was taking down the ornaments from the tree and to see that particular verse on the back of Nathan's ornament was neat.