Mar 8, 20225 min read

Liam James | The One Where Liam Turns One

The 9th Day of March, 2020 | The Women’s Hospital | Newburgh, IN

“Time has a wonderful way of showing us what really matters.”

-unknown author

One year. One year of discovering a new kind of love we had never experienced until the birth of our dear son. One year of growing as individuals and learning an entire new meaning to the word, “self-sacrifice”. One year of learning a new love for each other as spouses as we began our journey into parenthood. One year of clinging to the Lord more than we ever had done before, learning that what really matters is glorifying Him over ourselves each and every day.

For the first six years of our marriage, Bryson and I convinced ourselves that we had very little desire to be parents one day. Our joking demeanor was internally developing a great sense of fear and overarching lie that rang in our minds, saying, we were not cut out to be “mom” and “dad”. Then, the Lord proved otherwise. Two little pink bars appeared on the pregnancy test, and our world was brought to a screeching halt. What was the initial reaction to this intimidating reality? A shattering of those built up lies for so long and a showering of peace that could only come from the Lord Almighty. Rather than living and being consumed by fear, we knew that God was calling us to “trust in Him above all else” and rest assured that His will for our lives was far greater than anything we could conjure up on our own.

Even though each day of our pregnancy brought different concerns and natural nerves, we accepted that some things were just out of our control, leaving us to develop a steadfast faith in the Author and Creator of life. 37 weeks and 1 day of praying over our child, feeling the beautiful kicks and hiccups, and eating endless cheeseburgers and Chick Fil A peppermint milkshakes led to the most wonderful, love-infused moment of our lives: the birth of Liam James Fulkerson.

PSA: Birth is nothing like what the movies portray it to be. I’ll spare you the graphic details, but let’s just say that we were both thrown for a few loops in the birth and postpartum process. HOWEVER, at 6:29 p.m. on March 9th, 2021 at 6 pounds, 1 oz, and 20 inches long, our precious son made his grand entrance into the world. Being that we did not find out the gender of our baby until delivery, I had been waiting so eagerly for Bryson to whisper those inspiring words into my ear, “It’s a boy.” The pride and joy we felt to know that God was calling us to raise a son was incredibly humbling and exciting all at once.

Due to some birth complications, we were only able to spend a few moments with Liam before he was taken to the NICU, which began a whole new journey of trusting in God through the 5 days of unknowns. Though those 5 days were full of hardships, God continued to instill His peace within us through His word. We chose the middle name of James (1.) Because we wanted to carry on Bryson’s father’s name and (2.) James is one of our favorite books in the bible. The irony behind this reality is that the book of James opens in this way,

Testing of Your Faith

2 Count it all joy, my brothers,[b] when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Through tears of confusion as we tried to make sense of the continual medical updates for our son and tears of joy when we were finally discharged, we knew that God was once again asking us to cling to Him in steadfast faith, knowing that this was all for our good. It was in those 5 days that God prepared our hearts and marriage for the changes to come when we would finally leave our NICU moms and doctors and endure this journey on our own, which has led us to today.

Liam James,

We have spent the last 365 days figuring out this thing called parenthood. We have been amazing some days and have totally failed other days. But through it all, we have never stopped loving you. With every ounce that we can contain, we have embraced and purely enjoyed the role and honor of being your parents. You have created smiles that we have never been physically capable of through your goofy, spunky personality, contagious laugh, and ever growing proof that you are a beautiful blend of the both of us. Our greatest prayer for you is that you would come to have a personal relationship with our Savior, Jesus Christ, and would cling to the Word as your source of strength and peace with a desire to submit to Him as your Cornerstone. Happy birthday, beautiful boy, and know that we love you more than Joey loves sandwiches. ;)