Page 58 of You Deserve Good Things

Breathing. Blinking. Beautiful.

She was pale but present. She looked so weak but with that same fire flickering behind her eyes. My wife. My miracle.

“Baby,” I choked out, falling to my knees all over again, this time not from fear but from relief. I cupped her face like she was porcelain and had been dropped too many times before. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

I kissed her lips like they were air, and I had been drowning in despair. “You my entire world, baby,” I whispered, voice shaking like a house caught in a hurricane. “I can’t do life without you.”

“You’ll never have to,” she whispered back. Her voice was soft, fragile, but steady like gospel—quiet, but powerful.

Then came the soft shuffle of wheels—a sound so gentle it felt like a lullaby being hummed down the hallway of heaven itself. The nurse entered slowly, her white shoes whispering against the polished hospital floor, like even her footsteps understood the sacredness of this moment.

The bassinet rolled beside her like royalty entering a throne room, glowing beneath the fluorescent lights like it had been kissed by the very fingertips of God. The white blankets were soft, plush, and glowing like clouds dipped in moonlight.

She smiled, that kind of soft, maternal smile that made your chest ache in the best way. Her voice was wrapped in peace.

“Are you ready to meet your beautiful babies?”

We both nodded, but not just with our heads—with our whole souls. Our eyes were wide, our breath hitched, and our hearts had already spilled across the hospital floor, bleeding gratitude, awe, and a love so loud it couldn’t be silenced by fear or pain.

Sawyer. Sage. Silas.

These were the three little names we had whispered in dreams, scribbled in journals, written in the margins of hope. And now here they were—three tiny testaments to resilience, wrapped in swaddles of cotton and covered in grace.

They weren’t just babies. They were God’s fingerprints in flesh, the final stanza to our struggle, the living lyrics to a love song we had started writing as teenagers on a front porch in New Orleans.

Sawyer—the first one placed in my arms, her cheeks round and pink, her breath soft as secrets whispered on Sunday mornings. Her little hand reached for my shirt like she had been looking for me her whole life.

Sage—nestled against her sister, calm and quiet, but her eyes fluttered like butterfly wings, and when she opened them, I swore she looked right through my soul like she knew all my fears and loved me anyway.

And then Silas.

Lord. That boy.

When they placed him in my arms, it felt like my heart had left my chest and was now wrapped in hospital cotton. He hadhis uncle’s nose, my chin, and Shaniya’s mouth. His little fist clenched and unclenched like he was already ready to protect his sisters, like he was born understanding his legacy.

I held them close, my arms trembling, tears streaming, my body trying to hold on to this overwhelming wave of wonder.

Their little fingers curled around my pinky—soft, sure, sacred—like they had waited their whole existence for this moment, like they already knew I was theirs and had no plans of letting me go. I swallowed the lump in my throat. My voice cracked open like thunder under moonlight.

“Our babies,” I whispered, my voice shaking like an old hymn caught in the wind. “Baby . . . these are our babies.”

Shaniya, still weak but radiant like resurrection, turned her head toward me. Her eyes, still wet with tears, gleamed like polished mahogany soaked in sunlight. Her lips quivered as she leaned in and pressed a kiss against my cheek—a kiss so soft it felt like salvation.

“Yeah, my love,” she whispered, her voice dancing somewhere between disbelief and divine certainty. “We really did that.”

And in that moment—with prayers turned to proof, and miracles swaddled in soundless praise, and love dripping from our fingers like holy oil—I understood something I had only hoped for before.

God hadn’t just heard me. He had been listening the whole time.

He was there in every contraction. Every complication. Every chaotic second when I thought I’d lose her.

He was there in every soft kick from the womb.

He was there in the silence between our sobs, in the stillness of the operating room, in the screaming ache of my prayer on that cold hospital floor.

And now, He was here.

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