My Girl Turns Four!!!!

Happy Birthday Abby!

Oh joyful day to celebrate the lavish love of God to fashion for us such a cherish. It was wonderment enough when you were an infant, and wrapping you up and reciting whispered lists of everyone who loves you, and gentle pieces of God's Word into your baby ear to feed your mind with truth right from the start.

But, now. Look at you! A girl of spunky joy, who's crazy about dinosaurs and caterpillars and kittens and purple - preferences not imposed upon you, as best we can tell, but coming from the uniqueness of you, spilling out in afternoons of enchanting expeditions in real and imagined places.

I love how generous you are with your affections. You have no idea how deeply your little voice of love-saying feeds my Grammasoul. Excited jumping and a smile that won't quit, all because I walked in the door? Who gets that, except those of us blessed with the undeserved adoration of a small child? And when I got back from Thailand last time, and you sat on my lap for two days, no matter what I was doing, and just hung on, without saying anything....

Unusual, that not saying anything part. Because normally you're talking. If you're awake, you're talking. And the ideas that are forming in that fantastic brain of yours keep me on my own mental toes. Don't stop talking to me, sweetheart. I will always want to know what's going on inside of you.

So happy birthday. God is leading our family into a strong and grace-filled future, reclaiming what should be into what can be because of Him. Hang on to Him always. He has placed you in a unique position to learn how to be mighty for love. We will do our best to teach you how, even as we ourselves stumble through our own lessons, learning from you as so often we do.

So my wonder child, on this day of days, you are beyond word beautiful.

And I will try to do the impossible -- to live up to the enormity of the gift that is being your Gramma.
Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network