Yesterday we celebrated Becca’s adjusted 7-month birthday, and this Sunday we’ll celebrate her 10-month birthday. Becca continues to be a delight and is the cause of much laughter in our home. We’re enjoying giving her new foods — this week I made her sweet potatoes and I think she liked them!

When people ask us why we chose Rebecca Grace as our daughter’s name, I never feel like there’s enough time to explain all that her name means to me, especially her middle name.Before I started my music teaching job at Cochran Elementary School, I’d been reading a lot about a wife’s role of having a heart for her home. One of the things I worried about as I started my new job was the misplacement of my heart’s affections from the home to my work. At the end of my first year of teaching, things were going great, and I was loving teaching and looking forward to the next school year. I realized then that teaching could consume me  — there were so many things I wanted to do with “my kids” — so many ways I could help them.

A couple weeks after school let out for the summer, we found out that we were expecting our first baby. We were thrilled and so excited! I also saw our baby as God’s grace in my life in keeping my heart fixed on our home. I’d been reading Piper’s Future Grace with a friend and thought that if Josh and I had a girl, I’d like her middle name to be Grace to remind me of the act of grace she was to me. Josh liked my idea and so we settled on a middle name before a first name.

Little did we know how much that name would mean to us in light of the events to come. When I was admitted into the hospital “indefinitely” because of pregnancy complications, I truly needed God’s grace to trust Him with all the unknowns. When Becca was born at 27 weeks and then stayed in the NICU for 76 days, I truly needed God’s grace to rest in His hand. As a friend share with me “God is giving you grace.  How little did you know how much you would need that when you decided on Becca’s middle name being Grace.”

I saw Becca as a gift of God’s grace in my life, but little did I know how much I would need His grace in her birth or how much I would be learning about God’s grace as I continue in this adventure of motherhood. I now smile at my healthy, happy little Rebecca Grace. My heart is firmly fixed on my home and my family. Whether it’s feeding Becca, watching Becca play with her daddy, comforting her as she cries, or teaching her to swordfight with spatulas — my heart is loving the role God has given me of wife and mommy.