Pinky finger

I looked at Annaliese's little pinky finger today.  It was so small even though she's grown so much in the past 2 months and I just thought, wow, how great is our God.  It is amazing that He would design such a miraculous yet simple creation of a little finger that our fantastic human technology cannot recreate on its own.  And yet, there is the whole rest of her little self: her whole physical body that is growing and responding to the new things she experiences each day, her little personality that is coming more alive as she expresses what she likes and can't stand, and her eternal soul that God knew before the foundation of the earth.  I pray that God would draw her close to Him and that as she grows up she would treasure Him beyond anything that this world has to offer.  

Thinking about all this overwhelms me sometimes; what a task that Andy and I have been given to be her parents... to teach her about how things work, show her what love is, and train her up in the Lord.  Good thing God gives us grace, since I already know I'm not perfect.  And sometimes I have to remember what a blessing she is and how I really do love being her mom.  Like this evening when she was just waaa-waaa-waaaaa!ing and nothing I tried seemed to help her (you know, those evening fussy fits!).  So I had to lay her down in her crib while I ate dinner before going to biblestudy.  It was only about 40 minutes total, but when your ears start to ring at that certain pitch, it seems like forever.  Once she calmed down and we got to church, I just remind myself of what a gift she is and what an honor it is to have been charged with such a wonderful, serious, joyous job of raising our daughter.

I have a long, unending road ahead of learning to be this new role as mommy, wife, friend, daughter, sister and I pray that I just cherish it all and take it all as blessing.  I'm so glad that I have such... such... awesome, amazing, incredible, wonderful, deeply spiritual - none of these words can quite describe the friends and family that I have to learn from and love me.  One of these indescribable women, my friend Nikki (Nik as I call her), wrote this little "Memoirs of a Rookie Stay-at-Home-Mom" which has blessed me.  (Nikki now has 3 boys under the age of 3 1/2 and she handles it with such grace!  Whew - she's my hero!)

Well, I better get to bed, since she's already asleep!  I'll probably get to give my little munchkin a late night snack in about 5 hours!