On children

On Children
by Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

I have been feeling a sense of disbelief all week. Not in the sense that I do not believe I am pregnant but that I strongly feel that there are larger things at play. That this baby was meant to come at this time, that somehow I was pre-destined for this moment, this baby. And then I was thinking about names, and I remembered a long time ago reading something Rebecca wrote about her name choices. I revisited it today and followed the link to the poem above and suddenly it is all making sense to me. The disbelief continues, but with it contentment.