My amazing Gift from God

My eyes are pouring out right now. I just wrote an amazing blog entry about my sweetums...the love of my life - Jonathan Asher Ivey-Oladeji, who turns 3 months old tomorrow - and it disappeared with no remorse, no sorrow - no good-bye or see yah later. Just poof. Gone.

Stupid computer.

I went on and on about - I really can't remember now. The words were so perfect and it's sorta painful now to try to duplicate what I'd been putting off for so long in this blog cause I wanted to get it just right.

The Lord's grace is perfect - I know that. However, sometimes, i really don't understand why certain things happen, even as benign an act as the loss of what a person considers a "perfect" blog entry.

Maybe I was saying too much about Jonathan. Maybe I need to say the very minimum for all to know who he is. Yet, how do I do that??

Okay, how bout I say at least this: I love him with an inexplicable love and longing that I thought I would never experience in this lifetime. He is indeed the gift of God that was promised to me in his name - Jonathan - a name given to me by the Father himself.

I'm overwhelmed by the privilege to care for him, to pray over his life, to hope for him all the things I've hoped for a child that I might have: that he walk out God's perfect plan for his life, that he hunger and thirst for the things of God and walk intimately with God, that he be an example of Godliness to his generation.

I'm overwhelmed by how the scriptures I've prayed over his life are coming to pass. There was one that I prayed about him being intricately pulled together, like an embroidery, and his features are such a perfect composite of my family and his father's family, that it's hard to tell where the two start and finish. His features morph on a continual basis. The Lord's handiwork, his knitting Jonathan with lovingkindness, was so melodic, so perfect.

I'm overwhelmed that the Lord has taken something that satan attempted to use as a means to condemn me (unwed motherhood) and has turned it into one of the greatest, most astounding blessings of my life - really only second to the gift of salvation that I have through Jesus Christ, my Lord.

Maybe that's still saying too much. Though I don't know if there is too much or too little that I can say about my chuba whuba - my sweetums - my little man - my sweetie.

Today Jonathan laughed. I mean guffaw, tilt his head back, can't breathe laughter. And he did it all in response to my giggle. I laughed and it tickled him so that he laughed. That tells me that he knows me - he knows me, Kim Ivey, a woman who wasn't sure she would ever be a mom, and if she were, wasn't sure she'd be a good one - this Kim Ivey, he knows her as his mom. The truth of this is still so foreign and surreal that I have a hard time wrapping my whole mind around it.

But it doesn't matter if my mind gets it. My heart does. My heart knows the grace of God poured out over my life - His perfect love through Jonathan keeping me through pregnancy, a wondrous birth, and his first 3 months of life. My heart knows.

He sleeps through the night now. For me that is sad - even after weeks of exhausting middle of the night feedings. I miss them now. I miss that special, quiet bonding time. For me, nourishing him is the greatest act of service that I've ever been privileged to undertake. I can't imagine not doing it. I'm so grateful that I've been given the opportunity to do it at all.

I guess there's never enough words to express the degree of gratitude and joy that I experience on a daily basis now. Never enough words.

I simply love him. If I could wrap everything up into something simple and succinct, I guess that would be it.

I love you Jonathan Asher Ivey-Oladeji. I love you so very, very much...

Morally Flexible

Those are the words I viewed on a bumper sticker this morning, whilst driving toward Highland Park, NJ (a potential future hometown for me and my son, Jonathan (more about my wonderful gift from God in future posts)).

On first reading those words, my self-righteousness bubbled to the surface. Hmm, I thought to myself, I suppose that's some atheist or agnostic thumbing their noses at my Godly brothers and sisters, who courageously place fish emblems on their cars to signify their faith in our precious Jesus Christ.

And then, without missing a beat, I felt my authentic self tap me on the shoulder and whisper in my ear: "Um, Kim, take a good look at your life. Don't you think that you're just a bit morally flexible yourself - despite your Christian moniker??"

And guess what? I have to admit that my authentic self (as usual) was correct. Just take a look at the current state of my life. I'm the woman who habitually touted that her great desire was to remain celibate (after several trips off the wagon) until her dreamed of wedding night...to not sully the marriage bed...to ensure that she not defile the temple of the Holy Spirit through fornication, i.e., sex outside of marriage.

However, despite multiple journal entries pleading with God to keep me and my baby daddy above reproach in our interactions, and nights on bended knee praying the same, I found myself knock, knock, knocking on fates door, doing the exact opposite of what I'd hoped I would not.

A 15 minute roll in the hay and my life was changed...

forever changed...

forever changed for...

the better

I wonder now, as I continue this journey of living a grace-covered life, how much the Lord truly has used this situation -- my pleas to be "righteous" and "morally upright" to a point of inflexibility -- to show forth just how soverign and powerful He is? That against what some would consider "my better judgment", He saw fit to give me the greatest joy of my life - Jonathan - through what most Christians consider a deplorable act of sin (particularly so, because the man was - is - still married, thus, for all conceivable purposes - adultry was committed).

I marvel at my imperfection sometimes. Even moreso when it's seen in the shadow of my claims of righteous living and "perfection". Such claims are always tempered by the truth of God's unending forgiveness, through the Blood of Christ, spilled out over my sin spotted life.

I'm reminded that He is the giver of good things to His children - even those who stray from the straight and narrow path. I'm reminded that He is able to work all things for the good to those who love Him and are the called according to His purpose (Rom 8:28).

If being morally flexible allows His grace to shine that much brighter ... if falling short means that I'll reach up to grab Him so that I not fall even further... than I guess that bumper sticker does apply to more than the atheists and agnostics of this world.

It applies to me.

Does it apply to you?

For by grace you have been saved...

...through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8)

No better scripture could I select as the first line of my first entry in this lil blog, a blog that I've been promising to start for several years, but only now possessing the requisite courage to actually follow through and do it. Maybe having a baby at the age of 43 was just the thing I needed to put some fire under my bottom. Moreso, having a baby at the age of 43, three months shy of my 44th birthday and said baby being conceived after a single encounter with a gentleman I knew for less than a month, a gentleman only separated 3+ years from his spouse, but not yet divorced and who already has 4 children, in a womb full of fibroids, through a pregnancy that included two kidney stones, complications from said fibroids, and bleeding out a subchorionic clot...

Yes, no better scripture could I use to describe this journey of grace that I've been on my whole life, but ever so concretely in the past year.

The one lesson I've learned about grace over the past 12 months and what I hope to impart to anyone who falls upon this blog is this: it truly is a gift of God. An inexplicable, wonderous, and awe-inspiring gift, that when lived out in the real of every day living, and reflected on in the wake of its impact, can only leave a person with their jaw gapping wide open.

He is also teaching me much about what it means to not strive for righteousness and a salvation that has been given through His son. He is teaching me much about simply being IN HIM and letting Him LIVE IN and THROUGH me.

It's not all peaches and cream, however. Yes, there is joy and exaltation (my sweet son Jonathan), but also conflict and bittersweet irony (my ongoing negotiation of a possibly misguided/grace-covered?? relationship with his dad). However, it's living - and it's Him being poured out of me through a life less ordinary - imperfect. yet ever committed to knowing and experiencing Him more - authentically and honestly...FINALLY.

Will you join me?