Everything Changed

On January 9th my life changed forever.

My wife Esther had been having these "spats" of nausea - most of them related to hunger. For example, whenever she would get hungry it would make her sick to her stomach. One Chipotle burrito later, and all is well. Most of these nausea moments would blindside her. We would be sitting together and in the middle of talking she'd start feeling ill. Honestly, I wasn't saying anything crude of off-color. Sure the Mavericks' latest losing streak made me feel bad too but not bad enough to feel sick.

I thought the illness could be due to our schedule. Since getting married back in October, our schedule had been non-stop. We both work full-time and maintain a full social life with friends, weekend trips, and ministries. Perhaps, all of this was related to the fact we haven't had a day where we just sat back and relaxed. The upcoming Saturday sounded like a good excuse to relax.

January 9th was turning out to be a good, lazy day. We had recently purchased the new Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Wii, and decided that this Saturday would be a great day to go through as many levels as possible. We had completed over half the game by the end of night. We stopped a few times throughout the day to pick up food...you know...because she was still feeling nauseous.

At this point I started believing she might be pregnant.

Esther disagreed.

I protested.

We argued.

She took a test.

"Josh," she said sheepishly from our bathroom. I see her hand stick out from around the corner of our small blue living room. She's holding the test.

"Pregnant," says the digital test.

A flood of emotions entered my mind. Happiness, fear, disbelief, joy, - you name it and I was feeling it in that very moment. Of all the emotions I felt, the biggest one was probably a sense of inadequacy. I'm not ready to be a father. My biggest challenge 30 minutes prior to this was beating Super Mario Brothers!

Am I ready for this?

No way.