I sit here, emotional from looking through ten years of photographs.
I sit, faced with the self-imposed challenge of marking my daughter's tenth birthday with an eloquent tribute to her first decade.
As I sit, I fully appreciate the fact that this is an impossibility.
It is a trite and overused statement, but when I look at this picture, it truly does feels like yesterday.
And then the years started to spin, passing more quickly than I was prepared for.
It was over ten years ago when I set the pregnancy test stick down on the coffee table and looked at it, wide eyed. Married for six years with little desire to have children. Least likely time and place in my life to become pregnant, but I look back now and see God beginning the great rescue that morning.
He set out to rescue me from myself.
His timing is always perfect.
His plans are also. Usually so very contrary to my own.
I decided I wanted a boy.
He gave me a girl.
This girl.
I'll never forget a single detail of her difficult birth.
Thanksgiving Day.
Fourteen family members in a waiting room down the hall for hours and hours.
Complications. People. Nurses. Doctors. For hours on end.
And then, in the quiet hours of the late, late night. It was just me. And her.
I looked at that face and very literally though, "What have I done?"
No more ready to be a mother than I had ever been. Yet here she was.
The journey that she and I embarked on that night as mother and daughter would teach me more than I could have ever imagined.
I had heard the statement about becoming a parent and it was true:
Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone
As I look back over the last decade, I am flooded with memories. The good, the bad, the hard and the precious. It doesn't seem possible that it has been ten years since she came into my life.
I look forward to the next ten years with complete trepidation. This decade will be so different.
No diapers. No learning to talk and walk. No potty training. No learning to read and write. No rocking all night and no Princess parties.
How is all of that gone already?
This decade sends me to my knees. It's a less physical role for me and more spiritual and emotional guidance.
I feel less ready for this than I did in the dark that first night in the hospital.
So I find myself again hopelessly dependent on the One who can, and will, provide all that I need for this next decade.
He is able.
I've heard this statement several times even today. I'm thankful that He is, because sitting here, I am less sure of my ability as a mother than I have ever been. This keeps me fully dependent on Him and His Word. And that is a good thing.
My prayer for her now is that she will fully and passionately give her heart to the Lord. That to declare His glory will be her one mission in life. I pray that all that she learns will take root in her heart, and as Psalm 1 that she learned so long ago says, I pray that she will be like a tree, planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. I pray that her passion for Him will take root deeply in her heart and never fade.
She is a gift to me, and I will be forever thankful to God for that spring day when I realized that my life was about to change forever. I'm thankful for the daughter that I get to spend each day with. I'm thankful for the way we love and laugh. I'm thankful that at the end of the worst days, she'll still come and curl up in my lap, as best as she can, apologizing and forgiving. I still ask her if she'll always be my best friend. She's kind enough to say yes even though I know now we are moving in new directions.
In some ways I don't want to stop writing this post. I know that when it's done, we will be even nearer to the next decade. I'll be glad, though. Each day I fall more in love with this child. She's a true gift.
