Dear Simon,

Four years ago today, after five hours of pushing and begging the doctor not to perfom a C-section, I saw you for the first time. For that first split second, you were hanging upside with your head clamped in large steel salad tongs, screaming loud, angry air from your baby lungs.

Your daddy and I both had the same first thought: "Well, this kid is going to be tough." We figured if you could endure five hours stuck in a birth canal with not a single dip in your heart rate, one attempt at suction removal (instead of coming out, you resisted so much that the suction cup flew across the room and hit the wall), two attempts at the forcep/salad tong deal (it eventually took 4 nurses holding my hips on the bed while the doctor pulled you out against all of your prenatal will), you weren't going to let anything in life phase you.

Well, now that I've known you for a while, I think we were wrong. I think the scary salad tong birth was not so much a prediction of your personality as a foreshadowing of your life. That wouldn't be the last time that you were ripped from one world to the next, feeling as though your head is being squeezed in the process.

You were given to a crazy Mommy & Daddy who drag you from place to place, country to country, culture to culture. You had more stamps in your passport at 2 than I had at 22. And, while this has been an exciting, positive experience for you, it has rocked your world.... and probably squeezed your brain a bit.


Meet these grandparents. They speak this language. Meet these grandparents - they speak another language. We're moving to India. We're moving back to America. This is the 16th place your pack n play has been set up in the past year. We're having a baby. The baby isn't coming home. We're having another baby. This one is coming home and is going to play with your toys forever. We're going back to India but just for a bit. We're here and here and here and here. We're having another baby, but this one lives in Africa and he's going to be your brother, but Mommy & Daddy have to go on a trip to get him.

You are so amazing to me. In many ways you are tough, but you are also tender. You ask non-stop questions, reminding me how important it is to have the world make sense. In your questions, I experience my own memories of asking questions that have no answers (How can God be sovereign and I have free will? How can God be good while bad things happen?).

I remember what childlike faith feels like. People think it's the easy faith, the I'll-believe-anything-faith, but they are so wrong, and in you I see what child-like faith really is. It's I want the world to make sense so bad, but sometimes it just doesn't, but my Mommy always comes home and my Daddy always gives her lots of kisses and Jesus loves me this I know.

It's I've been ripped out of comfort and my head is being squeezed and I'm going to scream for a while but someone is going to hold me and sing to me at the end of the day.

I love you Birthday Boy. You teach me every day. And I will hold you every day, and be there when you're being squeezed.