Seven Year Miracles

Eve-Maire entered this world purple and barely alive. Throughout the labor Sarah had to lay down. The baby’s neck was noosed in her own umbilical cord and standing up caused a worrying drop in heart rate. The moments immediately following birth dragged into a tense eternity when the nurses pulled the baby from her mothers sight in order to clean her. Panicked and heartbroken, Sarah wondered is she dead? Then she heard Eve-Marie cry.

Today we celebrated Eve-Marie’s seventh birthday by going out for donuts. At breakfast Sarah shared the story of Evie’s birth. She said, “Your cries were the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard because then I knew you were alive.”

I wouldn’t know what that feels like.

I wasn’t there.

I didn’t come into Eve-Marie’s life until 5 years later. After her mother and I had met on eharmony.com, after we’d built a friendship that turned into a relationship, after we’d dated secretly telling Eve-Maire this guy from the computer that mommy hangs out with was, “just a friend,” to protect her fragile heart in the event that things didn’t work out.

At breakfast this morning I told the story of the first time I met Eve-Marie.

That first day I sat cross-legged on the floor as she showed me the toys in her bedroom. She turned around, looked at me in those fresh moments of our relationship, crawled into my lap, wrapped her arms around my neck and whispered, “You’d be just perfect for my daddy.”

Then she asked, “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

I’d fallen in love with Sarah before I’d ever met Eve-Marie. I’d been praying over pictures of her for months seeking God’s will desperately and the moment was too much for me to handle. As I wiped away tears Evie ran to tell Sarah, “I have an idea who could be my daddy, he could be my daddy.”

When I proposed to Sarah I gave Eve-Marie a ring too. When we wrote our wedding vows I committed myself to Sarah as a husband and to Eve-Marie as a father.

I love my little girl.

Today was a special day.