Dear Baby Ward,

Today your mom told me that you exist. Right now you are in the depths of Sarah’s womb, growing and developing little finger nails and stuff. I checked online, and you are about an inch long. That is the size of my thumb. For today and until I have to find something else to compare you to, I will look at my thumb and think of you.

But I will not just think of you, I will pray for you. As your organs are developing and you are looking less like a weird dinosaur creepy weird shrimp thing and more like a human, I will pray that right now God is developing your heart. Not the pump pump pump heart (though I will pray for that, too.. as well as every finger and toe and hair) but for your spiritual heart.

You are truly in the world and not of it – you are coming, but we cannot see or hear you. We cannot smell you or touch you. But we can begin to know you. The world will not be the same once you come in it – for your parents, your family and for people like me who will probably have to watch you grow up from afar. But hopefully it doesn’t stop there. Baby Ward, I am praying that you grow up with a faith that moves mountains, heals the hurting and finds favor with God.

Your parents share between them a love that conquered the world – it literally did away with countries and oceans and continents that separated them. I don’t really believe in fairy tale love stories or anything, but as I watched your mom walk down the aisle, I realized that this was the sort of thing Nicholas Sparks tries to capture in his stupid books.

Please don’t read Nicholas Sparks books, regardless of if you’re a boy or girl, but especially if you’re a girl.

You are in the middle of this incredibly strong love, and I hope you do not ever doubt how much you are loved. I can’t even picture the look on your parents face when they first hold you, but know that thinking about your dad going from Ru to your mom’s husband to your dad legit made my eyes fill up with excitement, because that guy is going to love and protect you. He’s done it for your mom. Your mom loves with the whole of her heart, and the floodgates are soon going to open and pour that all over you. And you’ll just sit there and cry and poop and sleep, and she’ll just keep on loving you more and more. Hopefully you’ll grow out of the cry, poop and sleep thing. But even if you didn’t, she’d still keep growing in love for you.

Even as you are a little Thumbkin, may you be stirring in response to God. The Bible talks about all that God does when we’re asleep, so I think he’s doing a lot in you right now because you’re super asleep. You are going to enter into this world wrapped in prayers, and surrounded by people who want for you to grow in the Lord.

But do not take our word on it. With every year that passes, seek out God in your life. This guy Bob Goff is kind of a thing right now and he talks about how he spends his life dusting for the fingerprints of God as evidence of God being there. So I hope you become a fingerprint duster of God, finding him in your home, your corps, your school, your family, your friends, Sesame Street if it’s still on TV, in flowers and the stars. And if things don’t seem to be adding up, because this world is full of stuff we think God should protect us from – ask questions. Ask hard questions. Make people uncomfortable. Seek out truth.

Let God love you. Do not just let him love you because he made you and is obligated to. He delights in you. I’m starting to get what that means, because the more I write to you, the more I love you and you are smaller than my nose. That might not be saying much because I kind of think my nose is big, but you know. It’s still small, relatively. Anyway, you are not doing anything to win my love right now but my love keeps multiplying as I think about you and wonder if your hair will be bright blond or brown or maybe in the middle, and will it be curly or straight? I love you and I don’t know you, but God loves you because he knows you. Be like a turtle and find a rock where you can daily bask in the thought that you are the apple of God’s eye.

I’m excited for the summer to be over and for you to get here (so I can know if you’re a boy or a girl) but I’m more excited for the years that come after that, when I see pictures and hear stories about you. And then I’ll get to meet you and hold you or play with you and maybe you’ll have some funny way to try and say my name (sorry in advance for the 3 syllables) and then you’ll keep growing and one day I’ll tell you about the way you tried to say my name and I’ll also tell you about the day I found out that you exist.

Baby Ward, I am so excited that you are safe inside of your mom. I wish you could always stay in that safe warm (and kind of weird) world, but that’s unrealistic. Be healthy and happy and come to us when you’re ready. That day, that moment, is being prayed for. Every day that follows is being prayed for. You are being prayed for, not just right now, March 4^th, 2013 at 12:30 AM, but at the current moment when you are seeing this.

You are awesome and I love you.