Luke 3:21-22
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

And on the third day after her birth, Chris and I brought Gracie home from the hospital. A huge “Welcome Home” sign made by our neighbor’s kids and a pink paper bow festooned our front door. As I opened the car door and placed my foot gingerly into the driveway, I winced a little, the pain of delivery still acute, and drew in my first full breath since we’d buckled her car seat into the back of the Jeep. I’d been determined not to be one of those new moms who insisted on making the journey home riding in the backseat anxiously monitoring every inhale and exhale. No, a baby wouldn’t change me that much. Instead, I just contorted my body in the front so that I could place my hand beside her tiny mouth and nose, alternately offering prayers of thanks that she was still breathing and prayers of petition that we’d not be hit by some careless college student on the way to our house. Miraculously, she breathed all the way home. I, on the other hand, drew in only a bit of oxygen through fearful gasps as Chris braked hard at two different stoplights.
But here we were at last. Sucking in the hot and sticky Eastern North Carolina summer air, I shaded my eyes from the bright sun and processed slowly over the threshold, as if emerging from a long trip in the underworld. Chris carried Gracie in, a little carelessly I noted, still tucked into her seat sleeping with her head bent all the way over onto her right shoulder. Inside the den stood the cradle my father had built, dressed in pure white linens and waiting to receive this particular divine incarnation. And so I unbuckled and pulled the belt over her head, unpacking her loose limbs which startled suddenly as I lifted her, and just as quickly settled as I drew her into my breast. A tiny, helpless bird of a being. She was not a beautiful newborn, covered as she was in a dark down, her head pointed and her nose swollen due to a lengthy second stage of labor. And yet she could not have been more alluring. Her perfection was indisputable fact, no matter how loud the desperate colicky wails, no matter how many times I changed the soiled white linens. She was my beloved and with her I was well pleased.
Somewhere in the recesses of my limbic brain, I too must hold the memory of my mother’s perfect love. At some point in time, I know she must have been well-pleased with me. Had she not been, I’d be unable to function in this world. Yet we displease each other so often now, it is sometimes difficult to remember our primal bond. I forget that I am a beautiful, lovable child of God, born through two beautiful and lovable parents. Parents who once crooned over my own breathtaking beauty, just as their own parents had crooned over them. Parents who gazed breathless into my eyes and saw their love reflected. Would that, instead of all the desperate ways we strive to be seen and understood, we could each of us, look into the clear lakes of our own eyes and see ourselves, perfect and whole and well-pleasing. Would that I could, just once in a while, take my own breath away.