Tiny Shoes

"Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you..."
--Jeremiah 1:5

When my littlest brother Jim was about three years old, Mom went through his baby clothes and began discarding what wouldn't fit him anymore. She came across a tiny pair of hardly-worn boys shoes and stopped, looking at them tenderly.

"Here," she said, tossing them to me, "you may want to keep these for your little ones."

I was a freshman in college at that point, with no real intention of having children anytime soon, if at all. Besides that, I was always the girl who had trouble being patient with small children (they all seemed so illogical!), and I detested babysitting other people's kids. At fifteen I had decided I didn't like family life and would never get married, though of course through the course of the years, God softened my heart to it. But as a college freshman, the thought of the pitter patter of little feet was a long, long, long way off.

Still, I kept those little shoes. I brought them back with me to my dorm and tied the laces together and hung them from my bunk bed. Somehow, they always avoided the garbage pile and survived the many moves of college from dorm room to dorm room. When I lived off campus my senior year, I unpacked everything and found those shoes again, and hung them from my book case.

They really were adorable little shoes, and part of me probably kept them for decoration. But I always knew, in the back of my mind, despite the hard patches in my heart, that I was saving them for someone.

When I moved into the house in which I currently live, it took me several weeks to unpack. But eventually, out came those little shoes again--those darling little shoes. I was to be married in a year, and somehow, that future pitter-patter didn't seem that far off. I hung the shoes from the bookcase again.

Last week, I was arranging the nursery with my husband. There appeared in front of me those little shoes again, and I finally put them in their proper place--a small drawer of shoes and socks for our unborn baby boy, Thomas. Finally, the someone for whom I had been saving those little shoes for all those years was on his way here!

As I placed those tiny soles away in their proper place, it hit me that I had always had Thomas in my heart and in my mind--inscribed there, so to speak. Even before he was formed in my womb, God had been preparing me for him. And I know that even now, before his birth, God has already consecrated him (Jeremiah 1:5). And that is why I kept those tiny shoes for all those years.