Just like that: pregnant.

And like the four other times, I got to see that little sign of tremendous blessing, I’m thrilled. But this time, it’s a sober joy, a realization that I do not deserve this baby, a knowledge that there are countless other women out there who, from a human perspective, are more deserving, women who would be better mothers, who have waited longer, suffered more. Like I said on Facebook last night, I did not understand the delay, and I cannot explain the blessing. God’s judgments are unsearchable and his ways past finding out (Romans 11:33). A relative asked me what this does to the family size predictions I was bemoaning in my post. What it has done is teach me to stop predicting. I am simply God’s slave. For a season, He decided that I could serve him best with four children, and now He’s decided I will serve Him best with five. I do not know what He will decide next. For the first time in my life, I think I have finally given my family planning up to the Lord. Not using birth control isn’t really the same as giving it to Him. I was still planning. I was planning on a houseful. Today, I am planning only on being a servant. A truly devoted servant is concerned with pleasing his Master, not necessarily with which job his Master will give him. In this pregnancy, and in all other areas of my life, may Jesus Christ be glorified.

I didn’t want to do more. My desire to be with my children at that point could definitely have been measured in the negative. As in, below zero. Less than no desire. I didn’t want to sing to him one more time. I was tired. Tired of children, tired of singing, tired of bubbles, tired of voices, tired of being awake, tired of diapers, tired of…well, you get the idea. Lengthening the day with any more singing was the last thing I wanted to do. But then suddenly, it was as if supernatural fairy dust was sprinkled from the heavens directly onto my head. A crystal clear glimpse of my very own future spread out before me.

All at once I knew that I was gonna miss this.

I was looking down at little Nuggey when this vision of sorts appeared to me. My son’s damp eyelashes, beautiful, long and dark, were batting at me. His tiny bottom was cradled in my hand, his soft, chubby legs thrown over my arm, his dinosaur toweled body entirely dependent on the strength of my tired arms as I held him in my lap. Yes, suddenly I could see my future. I was still sitting on the edge of the toilet, looking towards the open bathroom door. Nuggey, now a grown young man sporting a football jersey and facial hair, walked past the doorway down the hall, smelling of cologne and talking on his cell phone, waving at me as he walked by. It was going to happen. And soon. While I firmly believe that joys I won’t expect will also arrive when that time in my life comes, when our young children are teenagers and beyond, it still struck me like a ton of bricks. It was frightening, overwhelming and a bit horrific to me as a young mother. Tears began to fill my tired eyes.

I knew that when my children were grown, I was gonna miss this.

When Nuggey (or Big Mac or Stellan or baby Flurry or our sweet Small Fry) comes home from college, gives me a high five, asks for some money and then hibernates in his bedroom all summer listening to music, I’m gonna miss this. With that sprinkle of fairy dust, my future was shown to me in fast forward that evening. I was given the insight that my older self would give anything for 20 year old Nuggey to be a toddler again. Even if for just for one hour, heck even one minute, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I would love to rock him, sing and stroke his wet hair. But I won’t be able to. Once our children are grown, they are grown. There is no going back to toddlerhood, not for a day. Or an hour. Or a minute. I will have to be content with my adult children. I’m sure I will be and will look forward with much joy to grandchildren and beyond. But I am still positive that I’m gonna miss this.

* * *

How many times have you poured out your soul in holy eloquence, passionately exhorting your child to live for God, giving him everything you have, only to stare into those vacant, glazed, stony eyes that mean, “I don’t care what you say,” and you can see how desperately hard his heart is?

I know my mother has.

Because I was that child. Those were my eyes. That was my heart.

She would guide and teach me about the best way to do something, from how to live godly to how to wash dishes, telling me that I needed to trust her rather than my own way. But I hated that, and would reject everything she taught me, merely because it was different from my own idea of how to do things.

I would always reply with unbreakable arrogance, “What if you are wrong?”

And my mother continued to pour her heart into me for over a decade, not giving up on me. She prayed. She begged God to change me. She studied the Bible and every godly parenting book she could find. She examined herself to make sure she wasn’t causing the problem. She poured her life into me.

But nothing happened.

I continued to go on and on in my own path – the path that is the path of destruction and death.

It took God turning my life upside down to get my attention and bring me to see my need of Him. I had the choice between having my life utterly crushed with, or without God. And in that moment, when I looked into my future – and saw me doom, caused by my choices, I repented and turned to Him. And my mother’s prayers were answered.

Or they began to be. God in His mercy saved me from the full weight of the consequences that could have fallen on me, but I am still learning and struggling and warring with the strongholds that I erected and fortified in those dark years.

But what about those years? Were they wasted? What happened to all those lessons, principles, truths, teachings that my mother poured into me? At the time I utterly rejected them. At the time I did all I could to push them away from me. At the time I battled them viciously. What happened to them now that I wanted them? Did I have to start from scratch, all those years serving only to bring me to that place of repentance?

No!

God brought those lessons back to me.

The first lesson that I remembered and claimed as truth was that old principle of Trust and Obey. That same principle that I most viciously warred against and blocked from my every action. I realized that it really did not matter that much whether or not she was right or wrong: what mattered was my obedience to authority. It was not my responsibility to figure out whether she was right or wrong: by doing so I would make myself the leader and she the follower.

I want to tell you, mothers of the next generation: Don’t Give Up. What you see now, the ineffectualness of your hardest efforts, is not lost. God preserves them for that child’s heart: He stores them away for the time when that child comes to Him. And at that time He gives them to that child. And that child can take all those thousands of lessons, those tearful pleadings, and apply them to his life.

I praise God for where I am, for His salvation and transforming power in my life, but I also praise and thank him for my parents. For their perseverance, for their patience, for their passion, for their longsuffering. God knows how hard it was, but I cannot imagine it. I did my dead level best to make it hard, but I was warring against the hand of God, which upheld those two wonderful people.

And I thank them now for continuing to give those years of wisdom and teaching to that hard-hearted young man, for I would not have survived without them.

So, on behalf of my generation and your children, I want to encourage you. I want to exhort and plead with you. Don’t Give Up. God gives you the strength; God makes your efforts worthwhile.

God is on your side.

Jay Lauser, aka Sir Emeth Mimetes, is a homeschooled Rebelutionary writer passionate for God. He divides his time between his many projects and his freelancing web design and development business. He blogs at http://siremethmimetes.wordpress.com.