Once upon a time, there was a very happily married husband and wife, who happened to be very proud parents of a wonderful 3-year-old boy.  Life was great. The couple had begun to rest easy in the knowledge that their son was done with all the “baby” stuff–potty training, solid food, big bed, etc. The family was well on their way into the next stage of life involving preschool, public school, growing up and the like. The couple had decided long ago that their family would remain at three members. They had even been seen sitting outside a restaurant one summer evening discussing their contentment with life over an adult beverage while their son was with a babysitter.

Until one Sunday at church when the wife caught a glimpse of a family of more than three  and was particularly touched by the vision. She came home crying to her husband that morning, proclaiming the very sudden, very pressing desire to have a sibling for their son. 

The husband was taken for a whirl by this news. He did not want to have another child. What had happened to the couple’s contentment and mutual desire to keep their family at three?

Uncertainty grew. Hearts were sore. Tears were shed. The wife’s feeling of wanting another child became stronger and stronger. The husband’s feeling of not wanting another child remained.

All the while, there was still much love within the family, just a new topic of discussion (or not) sitting around the dinner table night after night.

The couple agreed to enter into negotiations – but not until after taking a month of not discussing it with one another. They felt it would be smart to stop putting influential thoughts into each other’s heads by constant discussion with no outcome. They would take time to think about it, pray about it, work through it on their own and then come back together on a set date circled on the calendar to see if their feelings were still the same as they had started out being.

It was difficult for the couple to get through those long weeks. Especially for the wife because there was always the “elephant” in the room. But they managed and it was an exercise in their faith, their ability to practice patience and to wait.

The time to sit down and discuss their findings finally arrived. The wife’s strong feelings of adding an addition to the family was still very real, but her desire to respect and understand her husband’s feelings were real, too.

The husband’s feelings of keeping the family at three were still very real, also. However, he had come to the conclusion that if his reasons for not having another child amounted to nothing more than selfish ones of not wanting to go through the hard work of infancy, etc., again, than that wasn’t reason enough.

The couple agreed that they would be open to welcoming a brother or sister for their son into the family and would let time tell if it was meant to be.

Well, the couple began to wonder if it was meant to be or not after three months went by. Talk about continuing the lesson in patience. Even more doubt set in after five more months went by. Finally, after the seventh month had gone by, something happened.

It was Valentine’s Day in the morning, after the husband had left for work. The wife was preparing her son for preschool when she decided to rummage through her closet for one more pregnancy test. She happened to call her best friend to gain some moral support for the grief she would soon bear with yet another negative test result.

The wife stood in her son’s bathroom, pregnancy test in one hand, phone in the other watching for the little pink plus sign to emerge. When all of a sudden, she dropped to her knees. The little pink plus sign that had eluded her for seven months was starting to make an appearance. Tears began falling down the wife’s cheeks as she asked her friend, who was frantically wondering what it was she was hearing on the other end of the line, if the test result was positive even if the pink plus sign was faint. “Girlfriend,” the giddy, yet solid and comforting voice on the other line said, “You’re having a baby!”

The wife was in a state of everything exciting! She ran to the kitchen drawer, reached for a snack-size baggie and placed the pregnancy test inside then tossed it into her bag. She gathered up her son and brought him to preschool, sure to not say anything about what had just happened.

She proceeded directly to her husband’s office after that, called him from the parking lot and asked him to please come meet her at the front of the building. He got into the passenger side of her car and she gave him a kiss, telling him she had a special Valentine’s Day gift that couldn’t wait.

Her hands trembling, she reached into her bag, gathered the baggie with the test inside and placed it in his hands. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” the wife told her husband.

The husband smiled so big and tears grew in his eyes. The couple managed a kiss but it was difficult to pull off through their enormous smiles! “Congratulations!” he told her. “I love you.”

“Congratulations,” she responded. “I love you, too!”

To be continued tomorrow, October 20, 2011…