Somewhat of a Rambling Musing

Life. One minute it seems to be sitting utterly still, and the next it is speeding by without warning or the slightest hesitation to let those of us who want to get on... get on. As these weeks shift by more swiftly than sand in an hour glass, I am surprised to find the seasons of life changing rapidly. It seems like everyone from my childhood is getting engaged, getting married, having children... And all at once, too.
Last night, Christmas night, we got the phone call that our cousin, Jonny, who was one of my sole playmates growing up and who is only twenty years old, just proposed to his girlfriend on Christmas Eve. This is both exciting and a little hard for me, since I was engaged for five months last year when the whole thing went kaput, as I mentioned in the previous post. But this isn't about that. And please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to complain. God's got grander plans and I'm perfectly content with waiting to see how they unfold, but somehow it makes the sprouting engagements that are popping up all around me feel just a little bit like thorn-pricks from a rose.
Anyway, Jonny's older brother Justin and his wife just had their first baby girl on December eighteenth. I don't know why that feels like such a shocker! I guess I'm just stunned to realize that the first baby coming from our generation has just been born. She's the first of the next generation of cousins. It hasn't really sunk in yet, but I keep trying to make it more of a reality in my head. All I keep thinking is, "He's one of the boys. How can he possibly have grown up and become a father?"
But he is. He's a father and a husband. Not the twelve year old boy Shalea and I used to spend hours playing games with that were on a more epic scale than Lord of the Rings (at least in our young minds). You see, there had been something of a fall-out in our family nine and a half years back, the year that we moved, and we didn't see much of the boys during the rest of our growing up. So now here is Justin, a husband and a new daddy. Jonny, an NP who just got engaged, and I find myself feeling a little dizzy that life is expanding so rapidly.

And grandly.

This isn't the only news and big changes. Brian and Shauna are at the hospital tonight, and by God's grace our little miracle, our long-awaited baby Teagan is going to be born tomorrow! Mom just got off the phone with Brian. They're on the elevator... on their way up. There's a chance that she could go into labor tonight, as it is. I'm so overwhelmingly happy with this little life coming into our world. She has no idea how much she is already adored. And how much her coming is blowing my mind!

I suppose it's hard for everybody to comprehend when the first of these changes come around. Brian, practically my brother and one of my heroes, is having his first baby. Tonight. Tomorrow night. Only God knows.
My childhood buddies/cousins are getting married and starting families.
Plenty of the young people I know are running off to college and the altar faster than you can say A+ or I do. It sort of feels like a baby boom. In Hollywood last year it seemed like every star was humming Brahms' Lullaby as they shopped at exclusive baby stores for their pricey bundles of joy. Now, I don't keep up on the famous people, but even I couldn't help but see on just about every magazine cover while waiting at the busy check-out line that Brad and Angelina were on their tenth kid, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were having the baby of the decade, Gwenneth Paltrow was naming another new child after fruit or something, and the liberated CIA agent from Alias was glowing with maternal joy for her and Ben Affleck's surprise package. It seemed like every where you turned there was the whisper of baby on the air. So, to make a long example short, this change of life as we have known it for so long feels very similar to the baby boom. Everywhere I turn children I knew are becoming spouses, parents, college majors, and moving into dwellings with pennies, nickels and dimes as every new couple does (the best portrayal of that is Jimmy Steward and Donna Reed in It's a Wonderful Life).

But now I feel like I'm jumping right into the middle of a story only a very few know anything about... Last night we were all sitting up around the table reading about this guy's life-story as he told it in his blog. His grandma had been encouraging him to do it for quite some time, because his life (in the surprisingly short amount of twenty-five or six years) is incredibly fascinating! People just don't live that way anymore... But hearing about his story made me think about mine and my family's. Maybe it's not terribly fascinating with near-death experiences and torrential floods, and pet crows who will sit on the handle bars of a young boy's bike while he rides around wild territory reading a book and being a human perch to other doves and pigeons.... but we and several others that I have known, have considered our life story to be amazing enough to write about. We've always said we should write a book about the things that we have done, but nobody's really started that great task. In any case, I feel like I should start from some kind of beginning instead of jumping right up to the forward-marching present. Which beginning to pick, I don't know, but I will take some time to think of where to start and when I come back I'll write about some of our very many adventures. And... in the meantime, I'll keep a careful ear on the updates about the newest coming delivery of the family!

God is so good for His precious miracles.

~Brianna