Letter to My Little Girl

Now that I've officially blown right through my due date, I've finally decided to get out of the squatting position, quit choking on the raspberry leaf tea, and just chill out. 

Well, "chill" in the only way a neurotic, Type-A person knows how: clean, organize, and bake...and eat all that I bake as soon as I bake it.  Hey, I'm over 9 months now.  Who cares?

But the vacuuming is done, the freezer-cooking finished and neatly stacked in the freezer (I had to restrain my inner June Cleaver from stooping to a new level of pathetic by snapping a picture of it), coupons clipped and filed away, and kitchen cleaned.  Oh, and the laundry...yeah, that's still in the dryer.  Since a while ago.  But hey, four out of five isn't too bad, right?

And since it seems like 1) my bag of waters is intent on staying fully intact, and 2) little E is equally as intent staying in her nice little floating cocoon (and who can blame her when a shrieking, hyperactive two-year-old is the only sound-byte reference she has to the outside world??), I really must do something else other than sit on the couch fixating about my cervix...or worse--do another lunge.

No more!

The one thing I really want to do right now is talk to my little girl, this already stubborn child of mine, and request--BEG--that she finally come out and join the family.  And yes, because we are not the wide-eyed and naive first-time parents who picture a Hallmark-card homecoming and baby experience, we realize what we're asking: total nocturnal takeover, messy blow-outs, and endless swaddling, rocking, shushing, changing, washing, feeding, soothing, pleading for just a little. more. sleep.  But that's the ninth month for ya: you get this weird amnesia and forget all that because all you feel is discomfort, extreme abdominal pressure, and the absolute constant need to urinate.  Oh, and heartburn from you-know-where.  Speaking of, where's my TUMS?

But other than begging her to be done already, I started to think (because that's all this very-pregnant body can really do anymore) about other things I'd want to tell her, things I'd want her to know.  And since she's gifting me with all this unexpected extra time, I thought I'd go ahead and put pen to paper, so to speak.

So here it goes...

Dear Evangeline,

Your name means "good news."  And not just any good news.  The Good News.  Your name literally stands for the Gospel.  And not the act of sharing the Gospel either.  The Gospel itself.  The Great Reconciliation between a fallen, broken world and a pure, holy God.  What could be better news than that?

But this "good news" extends beyond just the literal meaning of your name.  You were my good news.  After months of agonizing, waiting, striving, crying, and negative after negative after negative, there you were, growing inside me.  Such good news.  At one moment I was sitting in a doctor's office crying and the next laughing out loud with joy!  You were God's good news, long-awaited, long-yearned-for, and finally granted in His good timing.

Sometimes, though, we lose focus of reality and get caught up in the shadow of our existence: the routine, stress, and pressure of life.  If I could just go back to the sterile doctor's office room and recapture the unadulterated wonder, unfettered by anxiety or irrational fear, the announcement of your little life brought to my heart, I would do it in a second.  I think we women are especially distractable, with so many hats to wear and our blasted multi-tasking minds that can actually think about a million things at once.

So when you face your own shadowy moments, where the temporal seems larger, more powerful, and more real than it really is, I want you to remember three things.  These things are the Good News amidst the hard of life; they are "imperishable," unaffected by time, pressure, or your own performance.  They just are.  They are truth.  I pray that, unlike your mother, you will cling to them more deeply, more obstinately than I ever did growing up.  I pray, as the Apostle Paul did in Ephesians, that you will KNOW that you are...

knit...

I pray that you can declare, along with David, that "You knit me together in my mother's womb.  I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well" (Psalm 139:13-14).  Knit.  Woven.  Each and every stitch of DNA intentionally linked exactly as you are.  No mistakes.  Purpose behind every cell, every vessel, every line, form, color, height, and appearance of your body.  You are literally infused with creative significance.

In a world where little girls (and women are always little girls in their deepest parts) are so hyper-evaluated, critiqued, and pressured into ridiculous molds of perfection and popularity, I pray that you will cling to this truth.  You are knit, my child, by the very Fingers of God.  So stand strong always in the woman He artfully and wonderfully intentioned you to be.  Walk in the confidence that every part of your being has a Divine Purpose that He will gradually and exhiliratingly reveal to you along the course of your life.

known...

My child, there will come a day--many days--when you feel as if no one truly knows you, "gets" you.  Including me.  And you would be right.  Though I have carried you, felt your every little kick and hiccup, and will see to your every need as soon as you are born, I can never know you as He does.  Because you are knit, you are deeply known. 

"You have searched me and You know me...You are familiar with all my ways" (Psalm 139:1, 3).  This God who knit you, infusing you with purpose, does not leave you to live out this purpose as an orphan.  He knows you.  He is familiar with you.  Though friends may reject you, leave you out, misunderstand you, under-appreciate you, or even mock you, stand firm, "set your face like flint" with this incredible knowledge.  Such suffering is just a shadow of the Divine Reality of His personal knowledge of and care for you.
 
kept...

I love the Hebrew meaning for this.  Shamar.  It means to be guarded through observation and protection.  Are you seeing how these are all linked?  You are kept because you are known (observed); you are known because you are knit.  These very truths are a tapestry of His Making.  A tapestry you are meant to stand in awe of and, ultimately, rest in. 

You are kept.  "You hem me in behind and before; You have laid Your hand upon me" (Psalm 139:5).  He is behind you and before you.  In every circumstance, no matter how hard, scary, challenging, or painful, His Presence is the background to all of it and the future hope for which you grasp.  So keep going.  Don't quit.  Just keep walking.  And trusting.  Step by step.  His Power and Presence will do the rest.

Do not walk as if you are abandoned to yourself or your circumstances.  You are always surrounded, always hemmed in, always within a breath of the Divine.  Don't walk as an orphan; dance like a child of the King.

So when that dreaded day comes, and come it will, when you look in the mirror and are tempted to question the Potter, to doubt your design, or bemuse your significance, I pray that these three truths will literally wash over your mind and heart, renewing, restoring, and reminding you that this world is just a shadow.  The real thing is yet to come.

And He is going to be totally worth it.

I love you little girl.  I can't wait to meet you.

Love,

Mommy