“O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life.” – 1 Samuel 1:11
On a beautiful day of May in 2024 I married the most marvelous man, Mirko. And soon after we got married we decided to pray that God would give us a child. It was the desire of our hearts to have children and to instruct them in the ways of the Lord. Back then I wrote an article titled “Always Longing” expressing how much I longed to be a mother and why I think we are always longing for the next thing.
Months went by and my old self started to creep in (the one that needed to control everything) and I began to wonder what I would do if God decided to give me and my husband an extended season of childlessness. Could I trust God in the process and live in the uncertainty of what the future held? After all, I had gone through such a long period of singleness while desiring marriage when I was younger… And I had to learn to be patient and trust God’s will.
This time, as I struggled to give up control over something only God could control, I surrendered my longing to Him. I held my hopes of having a child with open hands, and decided that I would trust God (one more time) and I would wait, wait, wait… for as long as He would have us wait. And I prayed, like Hannah once did, willing to accept God’s will and submit mine to His. Even if that meant taking a “no” for an answer.
Little did I know that as I prayed my will would align with God’s, He had already decreed He would give me and my husband exactly what we had been praying for—an offspring, a firstborn, a son! How sublime…
It is still astonishing to me how God designed women’s bodies to be able to bear and give birth to a child. I recall my mother often saying that the fact a woman can bear life in her womb is too amazing not to be a miracle, the same way it is a miracle that flowers sprout, and crops grow, and the winter comes and goes. And who could be more in control of giving life, but the Creator of it?
God gave life to my son, Alejandro. And of all people, He gave me the privilege of carrying Him through pregnancy until he was ready to enter the world, and with him his little hands and curly lashes, and his cute cheeks, and tiny toes. Oh! How can a mother not fall in love? Time stops existing when I stare at him while he sleeps or he tries to focus his inquisitive sight on the objects around. Every subtle feature of his beautiful face will forever be imprinted in my mind and heart.
I feel like I always loved him, even before he existed. I feel like he was always meant to be my son. And as he lays in my lap sleeping while I type this, I recall Hannah’s prayer: “My heart exults in the Lord; my horn is exalted in the Lord. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in your salvation,” and I can say that I, too, rejoice in the Lord! Because He has saved me, and not only that but He gave me the privilege of being a mom.
So I pray with all my heart that my son grows knowing and loving the same Lord me and my husband know and love. And I pray that I never stop marveling at what I’ve witnessed through these past nine months and Alejandro’s arrival to the world—THE MIRACLE OF LIFE.
