38 weeks

Can you believe I'm at 38 weeks? I sure can't! Time is flying by and we are so excited. I have a feeling this little guy is going to come late and I'm perfectly fine with that. We're still working on gathering our last odds and ends and making his little room just right, so I'm ok with him taking his time in arriving. I'm definitely feeling a little less energetic and a little more round, but for the most part I'm doing great! We're both eagerly anticipating meeting our son and holding him in our arms for the first time.

A friend of ours offered to take some maternity shots of us this weekend and we jumped at the chance. I'm glad I'll have these photos to look back on and show our little guy when he's older. So far I've only seen a sneak peak of the photos and I'll be getting the rest this weekend. Check out her photography blog here.

I was inspired by my friend Noelle's blog post about fun baby things and decided to take a few pictures of my favorite things our little dude has so far.

Baby things are so cute! The top 2 were made by Jake's talented aunt and I'm sooo excited to see our little one in that adorable pea pod sweater. Next are two of my newborn cloth diapers. They are so itty bitty! And after that is a cute little giraffe rattle that my photography friend who did our photos made for me. Lastly, a fun little teether I found on etsy made by a girl in Estonia. I know little baby-P could care less about all this stuff, but I'm tickled by it all :)

I've had a lot of reality check moments in the last few weeks about the new journey Jake and I are about to embark on. Parenthood. Wow. This is such a big deal! God's been teaching me lately about the fear of the Lord and I'm discovering it's the only way to parent. Last night we hosted our first home group for the internship that just started at Gateway. We had 10 interns in our little living room and we went around sharing our testimonies. At the end of the evening I was struck by one of the reoccurring themes in everyone's story. At some point, almost every person (there was one girl who didn't) mentioned something about their parents and what they didn't do right. Yikes! That makes me tremble! God has made me a steward of this little life inside of me and I will have to give an account before the Lord about how I parented. He's not asking me to be a perfect parent, because sadly, (and thankfully) only He is! But what He is asking is that I raise my child in the fear of the Lord. I must surrender to His Lordship daily. I must ask Him for help. I must be quick to repent and ask for forgiveness (from Him and my child) when I mess up. I must be yielded to the leadership of the Holy Spirit (give Him the right-away). I hope and pray and will continue to contend that my son has an "uneventful" testimony. I pray that he will walk with the Lord like Enoch, and be set apart at a young age like Josiah and Daniel all the days of his life. I pray that he will be a forerunner, proclaiming the coming of Jesus, like John the baptizer, and an intimate lover of Jesus like John the apostle. I'm thankful that the Holy Spirit is schooling me in the fear of the Lord in this season. He's reminding me again and again that the God of the universe is watching me intently. He is overjoyed and excited to reward my small acts of obedience and humility when I stand before Him on that Day, but He also will remember the moments that I react in the flesh and in selfishness if I do not repent. His grace is sufficient and will fuel me to live without compromise to the end. Lord help me!