I remember vividly, as if in the last moment, a living portrait of my wife Natalie taken by my heart a few hours after my son Aidan was born.  After months of uncomfort, pain, tears, and back ache, the blessing of our first child was given to us by God our Father.  With the birth of this little one came also an enlightenment within me to a side of my wife I had yet to see.

I awoke, quietly, by the stirring of my spirit to behold my precious wife robed in beauty and grace, silhoutted by amber glow from the lamp-light softly pouring through the drawn curtain behind her.  This glimpse of her warmed my soul and a new appreciation for her blossomed in my heart.  The scent of praise for all that God had done for me by bringing her into my life years earlier, filled the chambers of my heart with the fragrance of love and thanksgiving.  I pray that it was well pleasing in His Throne room that evening.

To see my precious bride like that, even now in memory, warms my affections for her.  I am once again stirred in spirit by the amazing grace our Father had shown us both that night.  My wife, with tears full of love looking down upon the son that God had given her;  and me, in the shadows, watching them both in reverence of the Fathers love.

I was reminded by this vision of the years we had had up until that moment.  Three years earlier both of us were bound up in darkness and separated from God.  Both of us were without hope, purpose, or joy.  Both of us were depressed, searching for meaning, and full of anxieties.  Both of us were harrassed, helpless, and alone, like sheep without a Shepherd.  Now, as amber light blanketed her, it was as if in that one single moment our life was summed up beautifully in three little words,  “In the Light.”  Amazing grace had been poured over on us both.  We were no longer separated from our God.  We had been given hope, purpose, and joy.  We had been lifted up out of darkness and carried into the Kingdom of Light.  Depression and Death had been conquered.  We had been found and taken into the flock of God by the Lord our Shepherd.  Here in this moment, He had blessed us once again.  He had blessed me once again.  A new child to tend and care for.  A wife to walk Home to our Father’s House with.  Amber Glow and Amazing Grace.

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