My first grandchild and the power of Eden

People have a lot to say about how you’ll feel about your first grandchild and your future grandchildren.

Mostly, that it’s a love unlike one you’ve ever had before.

I’ve never doubted this was true, but now I know it for sure.

This morning at 1:58 am, our first grandchild entered the world and lay skin-on-skin on both her parents, loved and comforted into the brightness of a big scary world. After 9 exciting months and a grueling week of discomfort and expectation for the impending due date, our courageous daughter-in-law labored all night to give our granddaughter life. Our son, utilizing his expertise in physical therapy, massaged and counter-pressured his laboring wife for ten long hours.

Then these two young adults experienced the overwhelming deluge of feelings we all remember as new parents: unconditional love, wonder, protectiveness, gratefulness, and unexplainable fear. The human experience collided while they beheld the flawless face of a helpless baby who embodied and reinvented every hope and dream they had ever had.

They were smitten. Nothing else mattered on the whole planet.

The grandparents, when they held her, all felt the same way.

She has round cheeks and soft rolls around her thighs and neck. She has soft brown hair and dark blue eyes. We are confident she will keep her blue eyes because her parents have them; her hair will likely turn blonde like their childhood hair color. I’m not prophesying, but I think she will be spunky, kind, athletic, creative, and caring. It’s in her genes from both sides of the family, one of strong, caring women and men. She will be loved and fiercely supported, encouraged, and protected by all of us.

She is the apple of our eyes.

Her name is Eden.

There’s a little spiritual and historical significance here. Eden was the perfect garden where God established a perfect relationship with mankind. Where He walked daily with them and talked about intimate things. Where He gave His created beings access to everything beautiful and helpful, where He only shielded them from one thing: the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. He was a good parent, so He wanted to spare His children the pain that evil brings.

The Tree represented all the toil and tension that makes us fallible, that hurls us headlong into sin, failure, self-loathing, and insecurity. If picked, the fruit of that Tree would give them the experience of understanding and experiencing sin. It was a knowledge harmful to them.

As the perfect parent, God told them “no” for their own well-being and designed destiny.

But Adam and Eve traded the beauty of Eden for the tragedy of experience. They were human, and this is what humans do. (Apparently even perfectly-created humans.)

Humans reached for the illusion of perfection when they already had the real thing.

They needed rescue. So God gave them children and the promise of Jesus. As a perfect parent, God is a God of second chances and a thousand chances. He offered them a chance to teach the next generation to worship Him and the grace to believe that God could redeem all their mistakes.

This is the power of Eden.

Eden promises the perfect reality we were created to live in. Eden is the hope of mankind, not the failure of mankind. Eden is the eternal destiny we’re created to enjoy.

God promises His people in Exodus 20:5-7 that if they (meaning us) worship Him only–if we prioritize Him only–He will show “love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

Isn’t this why we love new babies so much? Babies inspire us to hope. They are proof of new chances and new beginnings. They embody past, present, and future loves: our children and now our children’s children.

Another generation of Schlesmans has begun with Eden.

And the world is brighter than it ever was before.