alyciatimm

I was an oopsie baby. My parents had thrown in the towel on a third kid years before the stork decided to drop me off at their house so I could take over their retirement fund. They were just getting to where they could see the light of an empty nest. They were counting the eight years left until their current youngest was out the door. They didn’t imagine that those eight years would turn into eighteen until the they found out that they were expecting a little boy.

Surprise again! Turns out Jacob’s umbilical chord played an impressive optical allusion in the ultrasound turning him into an Alycia!

Despite her many surprises in my arrival, my mom has never let me call myself an “oopsie.” Instead she has always described me to people as “her unexpected blessing.” And not to toot my own horn or anything, but isn’t that what I was? Isn’t all human life, expected or not, it’s own form of a blessing?

If you asked her, my sister would outright admit that she has made many bad decisions in her life, and these decisions have landed her in some rough situations.

As I have mentioned in earlier blogs, I am terribly black and white. Grace is a mentality that I have to struggle to obtain.

I saw my sister with no white for the longest time. I saw her as her mistakes, I saw her as her poor taste in men. I saw her as her surrender to her addictions. I saw her as a failure. So imagine the spite I felt when I got the news of her newest mistake: pregnancy outside of marriage. This spite only escalated when I discovered that this mistake was doubled. Twins.

On March 18, 2014 two baby boys were born a month premature.

I met them a week later, and fell absolutely in love.

The thing is: these boys, although created in the act of sin, were an absolute blessing. Years of spite, resentment, and utter despise between my sister and I were healed instantly in the moment she handed me the teeny-tiny monkey in a blanket named Aric Grayson Hopper.

All judgments I held towards the daddy, and all blame I put on him for the hurt of my family was forgiven the moment I reached my over-sanitized hand under a bright light to touch the tiny palm of my perfect, though froggish, nephew, Wyatt Brice Hopper.

They were tiny, and they were helpless, and machines were keeping them alive, and they were loved. So so loved. And that’s all that mattered to me in the moment. I didn’t care that life may be harder for them than many other kids. I didn’t care about the emotional and financial stress that was going to be pressed on my family. I loved the mere 10 pounds and 11 ounces of life they formed together with every inch of my being, and I knew there was no possible way that they were not meant to be a part of my life.

Human life is never an accident. Though premarital sex is a sin, and it bares many consequences, I don’t believe pregnancy to be one of them. I have never and will never see my nephews as a punishment simply because I don’t believe that the devil can create new life. It’s just too beautiful for him to fathom, much less conduct.

I’m not encouraging anyone to run out and fix their issues with pregnancy, that’s just crazy. But I am encouraging you to see all life as more than the mistakes. Because God can do INCREDIBLE things with the accidental paths we may find ourselves on.

Galatians 3:26 declares “So in Christ you are all children of God through faith.”

It doesn’t have any parentheses declaring “(except for bastard children)” It doesn’t say, “So in Christ you who were born to a mother and father are children of God through faith.”

ALL.

All includes, quite frankly, all.

I use to sit on my high horse. I use to judge teenagers with pregnant bellies, and worse than that I would judge the child inside of it. But I was humbled by the immense love of two earth-viewed mistakes. Because in them I saw how God sees me. Doesn’t he work through my sinful regrets in life to form me? Doesn’t he see me in my most undeserving times and declare, “So in Christ you are all (yeah that’s you and me too) children of God through Christ?”

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Grayson no longer resembles Ringo Starr, thank goodness. He’s the calmest kid I’ve ever met. He’s a cuddler, and he never meets a stranger. He has the biggest blue eyes and the craziest long dark hair. He loves baths, colorful balls, and Mickey Mouse. He laughs and cries in a high pitch squeal like a little girl. To get him to sleep you have to put him against your chest, cover his head with a blanket, and pat his bottom. When he wakes up, he’ll greet you with his goofy one-toothed smile. He’s precious: precious to me, precious to God, and precious to many others. He’s a blessing.

Wyatt is sassy. He is definitely the bully of the two. He likes to steal Grayson’s pacifier and then proceeds dangle it above Grayson’s face before sticking it in his own mouth. He is well aware of strangers, and he has a snub-eye that could cut right through you until he feels comfortable. He’ll sit on the living room floor and reach his hands high in attempt to touch his favorite colorful characters on the tv. He crinkles his nose and sniffs like a dog to be goofy (as seen in picture below) and has recently become a professional in the art of peek-a-boo. He’s precious: precious to me, precious to God, and precious to many others. He’s a blessing.

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My nephews were, and forever are unintended, unexpected, blessings in my life, and I’ll leave you with just a few last ways that they have positively impacted my life, and the lives of those around me in just the one year they’ve been with us on this earth:

 1.They’ve healed my relationship with my sister.

 2.They’ve humbled me to discover a love for people despite his or her background.

3.They’ve healed a long-broken relationship between my sister and my father.

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4.They were the motivation my sister needed to escape her past and pull her life back together.

5.They passively agree to model all of my goofy crafts.

6.They reestablished a joy in my mother I haven’t seen in years.

7.They can make absolutely anyone smile in absolutely any circumstance.

8. They are my constant reminders that every storm has a rainbow.

9.They have taught me forgiveness.

10.They have made my family whole again

You will never convince me that these two handsome little men were mistakes. I will never view them as anything less than absolute blessings.