My selfless moment

I am standing in the delivery room. My wife has received an epidural, but it did not come soon enough – she is in great pain. It has happened so suddenly, though she has been here for almost a day now, and her doctor and I have rolled her in here.

Our daughter has arrived in the world, just as Wordsworth says a baby arrives – trailing clouds of glory does she come. She is a blue baby. Tiny, beautiful, fragile. Very, very precious, in ways so profound I already know there are no words for. What am I?

• I am stunned with awe, awe at the profoundly beautiful thing that my wife has just done. It is sacramental and God-giving in a way I'm not sure even a priest could understand.
• I am humbled before God, whose bright love is a blinding thing, and in this moment moment I am as blind and speechless as St. Paul on the road to Damascus, although I have in fact never seen more clearly.
• I am filled to the brim with love, filled far more fully than I believed it was possible for me to believe. I am filled with love, unfathomable tenderness, for this daughter of mine, whom I have never even seen before. I am filled with love, far more than ever before if such a thing is possible, for my wife, who has done this amazing thing before me and included me in it. And I am filled with love for a God that I have never before been fully able to believe in, and to whom I will not come for a few more years yet.

Yet in this moment, I do know that he is here. I know now why a star shone in Bethlehem. If such light can shine in my heart, how could it have done anything but shine like a star when God's own son came into the world?