By Steve Brawner

Christmas gatherings at my parents’ house are not to be missed between the gifts, the fellowship and mom’s desserts. Four years ago, three of us missed it.

Those would be my then-50-year-old self, my then-44-year-old wife, and my daughter, Hope, soon to be born. 

Melissa was due to give birth any day, and we couldn’t chance going into labor on the interstate. We three stayed home while our other daughters, Mattie and Abigail, went without us. They were 18 and 15.

I’ve shared Hope’s birth story before in this space, so here’s the abbreviated version. We spent the first part of 2019 as foster parents taking care of two sisters under two years old. We also sometimes took care of their under-three-year-old sister. We loved those girls, but the baby especially stole our hearts. She started crawling on our floor. 

Maybe those little ones put Melissa into a motherly way. She unexpectedly got pregnant, shocking us all. We named the baby Haven. 

The next few months were a whirlwind. We had a miscarriage. The foster children returned to their birth parents but soon would be permanently removed. They ended up in new homes – the two oldest in one, the baby in another nearby. Melissa unexpectedly got pregnant again, which we greeted with resignation believing another miscarriage would surely follow. In fact, she thought one was happening. But there was a heartbeat at the doctor’s office.

Which brings us to Jan. 10, 2020, when we welcomed Hope into the world. 

People sometimes comment that having a baby at our ages must “keep you young.” It most surely does not. As I write this (wearing reading glasses), I can feel stiffness up and down my back.

Hope does not provide youth. She provides life. She loves baby dolls and tractors, so we may be raising a farm girl here in our suburban Benton home. We cannot imagine life without the pitter-patter of her little feet, her asking to sit on my “yap” when I’m working, or her full-throated singing. I’ve often joked that, as bedtime nears, she goes from Baptist to Assembly of God to Pentecostal. That joke kills with the Pentecostals.

I’m also often asked about the difference between raising a three-year-old in your 30s and doing it in your 50s. The answer is what you’d expect. You don’t sweat as many details, in part because you don’t have as much energy. This time, we did not consult how-to books about raising a unique individual. There are pros and cons to this. Thank goodness we have help from Hope’s “s’mothers” – her older sisters still at home. 

We’re also enjoying it more because we know how fleeting life is. I can’t believe Mattie and Abigail are grown women now. Weren’t they Hope’s age just the other day? This is our last chance to get this right – not the parenting, which we apparently did OK the first time around, but the joy, which we did not have enough of.

I’ve been given a second chance to be a new dad at an age when many of my high school classmates are grandparents. That is an amazing gift from God. Last night in church, Hope crawled into my arms, rested her head on my chest, and fell asleep. She’s becoming a bit of a daddy’s girl, which thrills both my wife and me. I did not anticipate having these experiences at age 54. But sometimes life’s best gifts are unexpected.

By the way, those foster children ended up being adopted by their foster families. We don’t see them in person, but we’re watching them grow up through Facebook. I recently covered an adoption event for this column and approached one of the adoptive moms to get a quote. To my surprise, it was the baby’s mom. With her was the baby, now a full-of-life five-year-old. The mom had told her about us. I got a wonderful hug and a picture with her. The girls’ birth mom, by the way, has moved to California, gotten baptized, is sober and seems to be doing well. 

By itself, there’s nothing intrinsically special about Dec. 25. It’s probably not the exact day Jesus was born. It may not be a more hopeful day in itself, but it’s a day when we can choose to focus on hope – and, in our household, on Hope. 

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Related:

A story of Hope

A year of Hope

Never ready to let Hope go