Sometimes stories are hard to tell. I’ve procrastinated on this one for a long time because I’m not sure I can bear to tell it. But I am not the Author of this story and I do not know what glory awaits at the final ending.

Stephanie is a single mom. I don’t know all the particulars and they’re not mine to tell, but shortly after the child in her womb began to move, her husband left.

Stephanie worked and mourned and waited. She worked a local ice cream joint that gives free cones to children under a certain height. I remember seeing her long before our session. She smiled as she passed my children a cone. A smile that whispered hope: children are a gift. Hope that I needed on that warm late fall day when my son had likely woken me long before day’s first light.

The Stephanie I met in the studio: she was the same. Quiet patient hope. Smiling gently to her newborn Ethan and thanking Jesus for him as she rocked him to gentle slumber.

I’m showing you this whole session in black and white because it evokes all the emotion I feel thinking back to this day.