After seven years and four kids, I can say with confidence that it’s impossible to predict how a child will transform your family structure.

That’s especially true for the first one, of course. The whole process of stepping into the world of parenthood—of transitioning from two (relatively) competent adults by becoming two (relatively) incompetent adults who have committed to a 24/7 responsibility for the remainder of their lives—that’s big. And you might go into it with a sense of how things could change, but it’s only a sense. You won’t really understand until you’re in it.

But it’s not just the first kid. It’s the second and the third and the fourth and (I suspect) every kid after that. A family is a complex web of interconnected variables, and introducing a brand-new life into that equation—complete with its own personality, motivations, desires, and quirks—invariably transforms the fabric of the relationship.

It’s something new, every time. And you simply can’t know the consequences of that newness until you get there.

But here’s the thing—the wonderful thing, the beautiful thing, the reason we’ve continued to have kids even as people start to look at us with concern or begin to worry we don’t know where they keep coming from:

They always belong.

They change things, yes. Oh, they change things in big dramatic ways and subtle little ways. But that’s not a bad thing.

Stagnancy is a bad thing. Going the rest of your life with nothing ever changing—that’s a bad thing. Having your life radically transformed by a new little life that loves and depends on you?

That’s called a blessing, folks.

But I digress. Sort of. The point is, with each successive addition to our family, we’ve moved quickly from being unable to imagine how life will change to being unable to imagine life without the change.

Each of our children adds something unique and special to the equation that is our family. Mary and I love to say to each other, “God knew we needed an Ollie.”

Or a Primmy.

Or a Peter.

Or a Haddy.

We were a family before each of them, but each of them changed what it meant to be a family in ways we can’t imagine ever reversing.

Of course we always needed them. How could the plan ever have called for anything less?

* * *

A long, long time ago—in fact, some time before there was time—two Beings settled on a plan.

A plan to create a universe and grow a family.

It was in motion before there was anything around to move—at least according to our physical understanding of motion.

Long, long before you. Long, long before me.

And yet…

We always needed a” you,” didn’t we?

The family existed without you, and to be sure, it could go on existing without you…

But here you are.

Adding something to it. Something, I suspect, that makes God glad to have you in it. “But now indeed there are many members, yet one body” (1 Corinthians 12:20)—and whether you’re a toe or an ear or an elbow or a kneecap, you’re part of the puzzle that makes things better.

I’m glad, when I go to church, I’m not met with a room full of clones who talk and think like me. How dull, how boring, how exasperating would that be? Just one of me is plenty, thank you very much.

Instead, I get something better—a room full of people who look, talk, and think differently than me. Our interactions are sometimes going to be messy and imperfect, but what good would a body full of ears do? What good would would that do any of us? “But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased” (verse 18).

We always needed a you.

And a me.

And the rest of us, each bringing something special to the table, each ingredient adding new flavors and dimensions to the stew we’re all cooking in, changing and reshaping each other in our shared journey to the Kingdom.

We could make that journey without you, sure. The whole operation won’t crash and burn if you walk away. But the whole operation makes you better. And you make it better.

And I’m very glad you’re here.