something new

Something amazing happened this week. Sure, it happens every day in every part of the world—but it's not every day it happens in your own family. This week, we celebrated the birth of a beautiful baby girl, my niece, Bayley Joy Blackburn.

Bayley’s birth is special for a lot of reasons. She was an unexpected five weeks early, and her mom went through a lot in the days leading up to her arrival. But when she finally made her appearance after an emergency C-section on Wednesday night, she was 5 lbs, 19 inches long, and amazingly healthy! We all expected her to go right to the NICU, but instead we got to watch through the nursery window as her dad held her proudly, smiling like had had never smiled before.

Many of you know exactly what this moment feels like, to hold your own child for the first time. Not being a mommy yet, I can’t imagine how amazingly profound it must be when something so small takes your breath away. But as I looked at tiny little Bayley, her little nose, little fingers, little lips, it struck me in such a powerful way how incredibly beautiful new life is.

If you have read my entries the past two weeks, it is no secret how discontent I have felt with myself, with my role in the world, and with the loss, pain and desperation we all live in the midst of. On a global level, I am struck utterly speechless when my eyes are opened to the terrible things people I know— and people I don’t know— are really living through. And on a personal level, I have been humbled day after day as the motives of my heart have been brought to light, and as I’ve seen how the myopic tendencies of my life affect people I love. The best word I can come up with to describe living in my world the past few weeks is “depressing.”

And then came Bayley… innocent, vulnerable, precious, new…

Bayley reminded me that our God is the God of new life. He does not allow us to sit in the brokenness of the world and the selfishness of our own life too long. I felt like he put this little girl right in front of me and said, “Katie, I’m still here, I’m still moving and working and living and loving in this world. You have to notice me. You have to embrace what is hard and still rejoice. You have to remember that I am still making all things new…”

So, dear Bayley Joy, thank you for coming to this world and into my life right on time. Believe it or not, I needed you. Your little nose, little fingers, and little lips show me how big our God is. Bayley, with no words at all, you told me that God’s work is never done, and He is never done amazing us with his goodness. In the midst of everything that is so hard to look at about ourselves and our world, we can’t take our eyes off of you.

My prayer is that each of us start believing with new passion how wonderful God is, and that we believe this even in the hard, the pain, the tears, the broken… and we cling to the promise that something beautiful is just around the corner.

Now, go tell someone something new and wonderful about life- your words might be right one time.