We arrived about 3PM. We found parking and headed to the maternity ward. Matt greeted us outside and led us into her room.

And there she was. A bundle. A treasure. A gift. She was offered to Joan, then me. I was a stranger, but she let me in. Maybe she recognized me somehow even though she did not open her eyes. I got to hold her for maybe two hours today. She slept, peacefully, and with security. She nestled. She “burrowed.” She yielded to be held. Tears well up. Tracey hugs. The room is full of love. Full of adoration. Emery remains calm, unperturbed.

She’d had such a long journey. But the trek didn’t just begin nine months ago. She has been coming for a long time, a long time to her true home and God-chosen mommy and daddy. In matters like these, well, there are no accidents and there are no mistakes.

Her birth mom, Liz, contentedly talked about wanting her, Miss Em, The Em, the Sunlight in our Eyes, to belong to such a great, loving family. Liz saw it in them, and through them, this love, before even meeting Tracey and Matt. Liz herself was courageous, caring, diligent, and, finally, resolute. Em would come, and come to this family. Her cousin spoke of Matt and Tracey as the answer to prayer.

And so they are, and their families, The Goods, the Edwardses, their siblings all, each contributed to the miracle that is her life. The desire to share life and promote life and embrace life. Miracle. Do you think I use the word miracle lightly, as a synonym for some sentimental something else I can’t name? No. Miracles aren’t random, they are planned, ordained, accorded life in those who enable them and embody them. Em is here because Liz was here. Her love for life and the life inside her, the desire not to thoughtlessly abandon it—these truly are heroic selfless acts. Miracles.

But understand, before that, Matt and Tracey, and before them, Pat and Patty, Bruce and Joan, and the households, the children they created—sought a world and to foster a worldview that valued family, nurtured hope, craved for companionship through parenting, those are miracles too.

Emery Solana comes to us with a determination to live and to show us again what it means to live, comes at this time in this way to this couple—and to all of us blessed to know her—because she has been prepared to enter our lives and we hers for such a time as this.

No coincidence and no randomness. Emery was not given just to anyone, just as Liz did not bequeath her to just anyone, and Matt and Tracey are not just anyone.

Emery Solana Edwards (ESE), like Sebastian Edwards Sanford (SES), are proof again that God continues at work in this world, without our permission, and always for our good.

Her hand is up: send me, she said. And so here she is.

Welcome Em. Make some more miracles.