Random

A few hours ago I was upstairs folding laundry and I heard suspicious whispers and giggles coming from the boys' room. When Charlie is sleeping the twins are under strict orders not to play in their room, since it is right across the hall from Charlie's and they usually have quite a difficult time playing quietly. I tiptoed down the hall and stood outside their door. More whispers. More giggles. I opened the door and saw two overturned chairs in the middle of the room, with both boys lying underneath them, chatting.
"Shhh! We're in our hideout Mom!" they whispered excitedly.

I didn't have the heart to enforce my "No Upstairs Play While Charlie's Napping" rule, and I snapped a quick picture as I reminded them to play quietly and ducked back out of the room.

It must be nice to have a built-in best pal - someone who walks like you, talks like you, looks like you, and laughs like you. Someone who has lived every single moment of your life with you, and came into existence at the exact moment in time that you did. Sure, these two rascals get on each other's nerves sometimes,  but the older they get, the more fascinating they are. What the two of them share is something so special, it's hard to put into words. When my doctor told me I was having identical twins, he explained that fraternal twins are the genetic ones. In other words, if twins run in your family, there is a chance you may have fraternal twins. Identical twins, he said, are a completely random occurrence. For no known reason, the egg randomly splits into two identical parts. They are, he said good naturedly, a random freak of nature. That is exactly how he described my boys, ten weeks along in my belly, as I sat there on the table shivering in my paper gown.

Here's how the Bible describes how my boys were formed: "Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother's womb... Body and soul, I am marvelously made! You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, The days of my life all prepared before I'd even lived one day." (Psalm 139: 13-16, The Message)

I rejoice in the truth that there is not one random thing about my boys, or any of us, for that matter. I love that God meticulously planned them into being. Before one minute of their lives came to pass, He knew about the hideouts they would have, the ways they would be so similar, the late-night conversations they'd share in the dark. He knew that they would stick up for one another, defend one another, and so often anticipate the other's feelings before the rest of the world had a clue. In fact, He planned it that way.

The other night Max had a nightmare and stumbled into our room in the middle of the night. After I'd whispered a few words of comfort he picked up his blue blankie and headed out the door, though he'd been told he could climb into bed with us.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"Sam might miss me," he said, and walked back down the hall.

Born together. Friends forever.