Today my oldest baby boy turns EIGHT and to say that I can't believe it is an understatement.  How did he turn eight?  I remember driving to the hospital to birth him and although some days that feels like ages ago, at the same time it feels like just yesterday.

Not sure if I've ever shared this, but at the time we got pregnant with Cayden we viewed him as an accident.  We weren't planning a baby and so in our mind he was our little accident.  In that moment he felt like an accident, although now I know that there are no accidents.  God was always in this and he planned a long time ago that Cayden would be conceived at a time when I thought wasn't the best, but he knew was the best.

Isn't it funny how sometimes we are thrown off by what life brings and can't comprehend it, but you get a few years out and you realize that sure enough that whole “God's perfect timing” thing sure is right.  Had we not had Cayden at that time, we wouldn't have been ready to adopt Deacon, and we wouldn't have been ready for Amos or Story either.  God's perfect plan was laid out despite what we thought was a perfect plan.

Anyhow … we had just moved to TN for Aaron to pursue music full time and I was gonna support our cute little family of just the two of us and our dog, Max.  Life was easy and simple and we had a plan.  I would teach school for three years while Aaron worked at music, then we would re-evaluate and hopefully I would be able to quit and we could start our cute little family.

I found a job and began my role as sole-provider only to find out 2 months after we moved that I was pregnant and everything changed.  Of course Aaron was out of town when I took the pregnancy test.  Why I couldn't wait until later that night, I'll never know, but there I was alone in our apartment finding out I was pregnant.  This next part of the story brings me guilt on so many levels, but in that moment I was devastated.  I had no idea why this was happening now, or how we would make it.  I called Aaron and sure enough he was driving through Arkansas and had no cell service, so I called my mom and cried and cried.  She suggested I go take another test, so I drove to the grocery store and bought two tests with tears streaming down my face.  The checkout lady congratulated me and I remember vaguely smiling and thinking “this is not the plan”.  Took the tests and sure enough it was confirmed three times.  Pregnant.

I finally got a hold of Aaron and we had one of the most awkward conversations we've ever had.  He was driving our motor home back to TN with his parents when I called.

Me:  Hey, I have some bad news.

Aaron:  What?  You okay.

Me:  No, I'm pregnant.

Aaron:  What?

Me:  I'm pregnant.

Aaron:  How?

Me:  Seriously.

Aaron:  I mean, how do you know?

Me:  I took a test.

Aaron:  Are you sure?

Me:  I took three test.

Aaron:  Okay,  I'll call you later.

That was it.  We were both in shock.  His parents were with him, and I think he wasn't quite sure how to react.  We laugh at this now, but at the time we had no clue what to say to each other!

That's how we found out about our child that we never planned.  I sometimes laugh that out of all of our four kids Cayden is the only one that wasn't planned and he's the one we created.  I remember those moments of me alone in the apartment crying and telling God that he had really done it now.  He had screwed up our plan.   How would this work, because we moved here feeling like he led us here and now this.  It would never work.  I wasn't supposed to get pregnant.

Of course those feelings were fleeting and we were overjoyed with the new life in me eventually.  God did so much to make us lean on him.  We had no other way to get through this than with his help.  Another story for another day, but when I was about 6 months pregnant we found out that the insurance we thought we had we really didn't have.  That's fun when you are 6 months pregnant and poorer than you've ever been in your married life.  Lovely.

So, today on Martin Luther King Jr. Day I tell you my son, Cayden, HAPPY HAPPY 8th birthday.  You were no accident and in God's great big plan of life you were perfectly created and formed in his perfect timing.  You are a true joy to this family.  You have so many quirks that make you unique, and you enjoy school like no other kid I know.  You are gonna be a great father and husband one day, I just know it.  You love animals and constantly talk about Carson (our old dog) with a sincere love that no one else in this house felt for that dog.  Your mouth will be what gets you in trouble around here, and you constantly have to have the last word (I'm not sure who you learned that one from!).  You are gonna love being eight!

Cayden I LOVE YOU!