I just returned from several days of “MaeMae” duties in Birmingham.
Smith Hemingway Bailey is my youngest grandchild. He is a curly-haired little cherub with an eye malfunction we refer to as “lazy eye.”
Enormous bi-focals make him look like “the little professor,” and he plays the part well. Although several months shy of his third birthday, he has a vocabulary that would make you think he reads Encyclopedias at bedtime.
His verbal skills are more likely the result of having two older sisters who are never quiet.
I think he thoroughly enjoyed having my undivided attention, and I certainly enjoyed the time with him.
Without the competing voices of his two sisters, I had the luxury of noticing — really noticing — his unique little personality.
There was a much loved pediatrician in the Jackson area whose easy going countenance and winsome sense of humor helped a lot of neurotic young mothers get through their first years of maternal angst.
He often got the very serious question, “How can I be sure I raise a well-adjusted child?”
Keeping a straight face, he answered just as seriously, “Have three children, and throw the first two away.”
For some reason, playing with Smith this past week made me think of Dr. Donaldson.
He is definitely my daughter’s “easy” child, the one with an always happy disposition, the one who sleeps well, eats everything, plays hard, and willingly takes the popsicle or the half empty jar of bubbles that his sisters reject.
He is basically agreeable about everything 99 percent of the time.
I couldn’t help remembering, however, how absolutely not thrilled we were when we found out he was on the way. Charles and I were in Memphis at a “Grandparent’s Day” for two grandsons when Betsy called me on a brisk October day in 2015.
I could barely understand her as she was sobbing into the phone telling me she was pregnant. (So, if you have read me before, you know this is not an unheard of event between my daughter Betsy and me — sobbing phone calls).
Her second child was one week shy of her first birthday, and she had just that very week gone back to work full-time.
I admit I cried with her wondering how in the world she would manage a full-time job and another baby – three little people under 3-and-a-half.
God did mercifully help me comfort her. I spoke with my brain rather than my heart (thank you, Jesus) when I told her, “God does not make mistakes.
I don’t understand this either, but we have faced a lot tougher things than this. It is going to be okay.”
I am not sure I completely felt that way inside, but I did believe 100% that God’s plans are always good. I just have to admit I questioned God’s timing.
It just did not seem like the most opportune time to have to learn some God-ordained character-building lesson!
As the months went by and the sonograms appeared, we began to call him by his name, Smith. He became a real, little, living, breathing person to us long before she gave birth to him on June 13, 2016.
When they rushed him off to the NICU because of lung issues, we were all devastated because we so wanted him to be okay, to know his two sisters, and to just be part of the happy chaos that is the daily fare at the Bailey house.
The past few days reminded me of our prayers and God’s “yes” in spades.
Smith is at the core of the happy chaos.
Syrup in the curls at breakfast, mud and dirt caked on his soft little cheeks after an afternoon of outdoor play, and a little voice that says, “MaeMae, can we go on an adventure?” — all those delicious little slices of hours spent with him will stay in my heart forever.
And if he had asked me one more time with those big eyes and long eye-lashes, “Why I not get to go to Hawaii?” I honestly think I might have chartered an airplane myself and taken him!
He is the blessing we second guessed God about. Jeremiah 29: 11 is a verse most of us can say in our sleep, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to give you hope and a future.”
In retrospect I am spine-chillingly grateful to have decided a long time ago that God is sovereign over life and death.
God’s cataclysmic disruptions are fodder for life’s greatest joys and blessings.
That’s why I trust Him, and Smith Hemingway Bailey is one of the best reasons I can give for being unapologetically Pro-life.
