There’s a little boy in my house who loves to play with construction equipment. He plays and plays and plays, be it with semis and trailers or excavators and dump trucks. Half of my dining table is almost always occupied with a scattering of machinery, big and small.

All this usage, and the little boy being only two years old, makes for toys that get broken and battered and eventually unusable. His very first favorite construction toy was a little yellow excavator. Even when one of the wheels fell off and the boom went limp, he had to have that toy every single day. It eventually went the way of all toys, and other excavators came along. But one by one, they, too, got lost or broken, and finally all he had left was a Lego excavator that kept falling apart.

Oh, he had plenty of other construction toys, but the semis were all missing wheels, and the dump trucks had dried out Playdough stuck in their cabs (if they even still had a cab), and the trailers didn’t hitch up to the semis very well anymore, and . . . despite all that, he faithfully played with his toys.

Then one day I heard this contented and happy little boy say very quietly and wistfully, “I wish I had a skidsteer.”

In all his construction toys, he’d never had a skidsteer.

So what did his mother do but go on Amazon and buy a skidsteer. And when that skidsteer came in the mail, I couldn’t wait to give it to him. I wanted to make it really special somehow though, so for a while, the skidsteer just sat in a drawer, waiting for the perfect opportunity.

That opportunity came this morning. Sebastian had gotten up at 5:40am, and his Lego excavator was being especially cantankerous, and I knew Alec had new paper and tape and ribbon coming in the mail for all his craft projects.

It was the perfect opportunity.

And he was thrilled. I couldn’t even get him to look up from it long enough to take a good picture. I sent this picture to Eric, and he replied, “His unadulterated joy makes me smile.”Me too. 🙂

It was so sweet, and even Alec was excited to see his little brother get something special and new just out of the blue. Alec often gets little things here and there for his craft projects, but Sebastian has been contentedly playing with the same old toys for a long time now.

And in my realizing how much joy it gave me to put that blissful smile on that little boy’s face, I realized how it must be that way sometimes for God as well when He gives us good gifts. Jesus said as much, really.

“If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?” (Matthew 7:11)

So often we think of God as sending us trials to refine us, to make us more like Him. And we know that He does that as well. But He also gives us good gifts, maybe if only to see us smile like Sebastian did when I gave him that little skidsteer.

So as I look another labor and delivery in the face and pray every day about the specifics of it and ask for something beautiful, that thought is comforting to me.

Yes, He could decide to use this moment to refine me.

Or He could use it to give me a beautiful experience that is more than I asked or thought, something that makes me cry out in praise to Him again and again.

Because He is a good Father, and He delights to give good gifts to His children.

Either way, whether this upcoming birth is a refining moment or a beautiful one or both, I know He is good, and in the midst of my asking, I rest in that.

And I rest also in knowing that no matter how he comes, our sweet Baby Baer will be one of those good, good gifts, sent straight from the Father.

More than we asked or thought.

 

I know I'm not the only one thinking about such things these days . . . a lot of my friends are also due with babies in the coming month or so. If that's you, I hope you can be encouraged as well . . . He is with us, and He is good.