Letter to Caleb at 39 weeks...

You are almost here, Caleb!

I'm not sure I could be any more excited. We can't wait to hold you in our arms for the first time. Never have I thought this day would come. Do you know how special you are? You are already so much of our pride and joy, and we haven't even seen you face to face yet. How can it be that we are at our final week before your due date? How did that happen? I'll tell you - God! I truly believe it was God that has held you in my womb and knit you together. You are a bouncing baby boy for sure (if all that movement you give me in my tummy is any indication)! I loved last night as your Daddy put his hand on my belly and I felt and saw you move his hand up! :) I believe you know our voices and you know that is us!

So when you hear us again after you are born - that's us! We are your parents. God has given you to us to take care of you, teach you, love you, and raise you into the amazing person that God has called you to be! If God thinks we can do it, then I have to believe we can (with His help). If you hear us crying - no, we aren't sad. We are overjoyed! That first week of your life here on this earth - please be understanding if we mess up on things. We are learning. We are going to do our best for you because we just love you so much!

I am incredibly humbled to be your mommy. I don't know that I feel worthy of you because I'll admit it - I can be quite selfish. You deserve only the very best, and God thought you would be a perfect fit for us. I hope we live up to that. I'm not saying we won't make mistakes - oh we will. But, my prayer to God is that He gives us the grace we need to get through it and that you will be understanding of our faults. We don't want to make these mistakes. We are learning just as you will be learning too!

I promise to pray for you each and every day of your life here! Probably more than a dozen times a day! I've been telling your Daddy that when I wake up as much as I do now that God is just preparing me for a lifetime of my doing that. I tend to be a worrier, and I really hope I do a better job with that now that you are coming. I don't want to pass worry down to you. I don't want you to be a worrier because it's not healthy, and it's not trusting in God. But as a mother, I know I will look in on you often. I will probably check that you are breathing several times a day. I will probably be over protective of you when it comes to a lot of things, but that's just because I am learning this mom thing.

I'm a work in progress, my sweet boy. I am trying and will try for the rest of my life to be the kind of mom you deserve! You are such an amazing gift, so I want to do right by God. I want to show Him that I take this job as your mom very seriously. Your Daddy is the same way...though he worries much less. I hope you take after him in this regard. :)

So as much as I know I am going to fail at things or struggle, I can promise you the following:

• A home filled with LOVE! You will know love, darling boy! You will be kissed and hugged every single day. And when you are "too old" for that, your mom will still try anyways. Humor me! And even when we are mad or you have done something wrong and we have to punish you, we will still love you. Nothing can change our love for you. Absolutely nothing!
• You will have both of your parents married to each other and love each other! This is a BIGGIE to us. Chances are, you will know and meet a lot of people who comes from single parent homes or their parents are divorced, or something similar. But you will NEVER have that. Your parents will stay married and stay committed and in love with each other until we die. I promise you that. We have seen the heartache that many families go through when their parents divorce, and we resolved LONG before you were conceived that we would NEVER make divorce an option. It just isn't. We love each other sooo very much and always will. Your Daddy is the the man that I will always choose, even in hardship. And considering some of the hardship we have already faced, I know we can and will make it. And we want you to never fear that things aren't safe in your home. We want you to always feel secure in knowing that your parents love you and love each other. We will fight for this family for the rest of our lives.
• You are a Taber, son. You come from Dunmyer's and Taber's - strong values and a lot of stubborness! So no matter what happens in our lives together, we will stay strong as a family and hold tight to God. Your name means faithful to God. I believe that you will be a man that is faithful because our hope is to teach you all that God has done in our lives and show you all the stories, etc of his love. And someday, we hope and pray you will choose Him for yourself. We will not compromise when it comes to the world's values or God's values. God's values will win every time in our book. Even if the government tells us to obey them over God, we will choose God! So when we emphasize something to you as being important because that's what God says, understand we have learned a lot in our 33 + years of life and have seen firsthand that what God says is truly the best thing. He doesn't tell us to live a certain way or do certain things because He is mean. It's because He knows the heartache and pain that can come from choosing to do the opposite. And we have learned that firsthand when we have made mistakes. We are thankful that God's grace covers that too!
• You are a child of the One True King. Yes - Jesus! He adores you and will be with you ALL the days of your life. I promise. You have to be the one to choose Him though. You will sin and make mistakes in this life. There is a lot of sin and pain in this world,  and we all fall short and make mistakes. But the amazing thing is - God's love covers all of that. Jesus came and died and rose again so that you can have a relationship with Him. We don't expect you to understand any of this right now (as you are just a tiny little baby in my womb), but someday, we hope to explain it in a way you understand. Jesus loves you sooo very much though, Caleb. He knew about you and knew what you were going to be LONG before we even knew you were there. He has a perfect plan for your life and designed you to be someone He can use. What that is - I'm not sure. But we will be praying for you every single day that you will discover that for yourself. We just know that you do have a purpose that God designed just for you! And we are here to help you along your life's journey too. We will be your biggest fans! We will be your biggest support!
• You have some of the best extended family possible! Your grandparents are incredible people and love you SOOOO much! They will teach you all kinds of things themselves, and are also very faithful to God. In fact, they were the ones that taught me! And you have an amazing aunt and uncle that adore you and pray for you! Your aunt Jen is a lawyer now and your uncle Wes knows SOOO much about American history. I am sure they will be HUGE advocates for you and you will learn MUCH from them as well. You have other aunts and uncles, whether blood related or not, that adore you and have prayed for you. You are well loved and have an incredible support system.
• We want to have fun! Yes - this is important in a family. We will do what we can to have family vacations because those were always some of my most favorite memories growing up. I want you to experience camping, I want you to experience hiking and see the beach and mountains! I want you to see real life penguins, and of course all the other animals (yes - your Momma just loves penguins as you will see). We want to play board games together as a family and have family movie nights too. Life has a lot of hardship for sure, but we want to bring you joy and happiness in this life too! We want you to soak up all of these experiences because they are important!
• We will want you to read for fun and for learning. You will have to read in school for sure, but our hope is that you WANT to read for fun and learning as well. We will read to you as you grow up and I hope that will make you want to read and go on some amazing adventures yourself in books!
• We will be a family that plays music and will sing in the car, praise God, etc. Music is soo important. I can't even name all of the songs in this life that have impacted me in a huge way...or that bring memories to mind. Music is very important. So we will sing songs with you as you grow up, and when on vacations, don't be surprised if we sing silly songs like "Do Your Ears Hang Low," and "Grandma, Where Out Thou Going," You will love music...I mean, I remember when I played "God's Great Dance Floor" and "Happy" and you were all moving around in my belly. I hope that was because you liked the sound! :)

And these are just some of the things we want for you! We love you, dear boy! Thank you for being our boy! We know you are God's promise to us, and we are soo blessed to have you!

And we are waiting for your arrival, but if God wants you in there a little longer, well I can wait. Just know we are soooo very excited for you! See you soon face to face, Caleb!

Love, Mommy and Daddy!