She entered my life in the heart of Texas. We were strangers there, temporarily assigned by the Air Force while my husband received training. We had been married only 10 months before and here we were alone in the middle of flat nowhere meeting her for the first time. "It's boy!" my husband first said and was quickly corrected by the doctor's official pronouncement. I was absolutely flabbergasted that I would have a girl. I had just figured it would be a boy 'cause first born boys run on my side. But there she was, perfect and beautiful and tiny in my arms. From the beginning she was a gift. Oh, the fun of naming her and dressing her in pink and knowing she was our very own! God knew we needed her. Right then. Ten months after we took our vows. In the heart of a strange land. On our own. Without the usual fanfare you'd expect with a first born. We were a real family now, just starting out on our adventure together and God knew we'd want to share it with her. It shaped us. It changed us. It grew us.
And she's been there for all of it. The five states. The 10 moves. The next 5 siblings--including 2 adoptions. The different career paths. The hard choices that changed our lives.
She's given us joy, beauty, laughter, sweetness and encouragement all along the way in the different stages and places. She's provided some frustration here and there as any child will do (there was a reason my husband called her the Banshee after all) but that's to be expected when training a human being from scratch. The best joy is to see her now loving Christ and desiring to follow Him.
As I look back on these years that have so quickly flown, I see the cute little girl proudly holding a baby brother. I see a strawberry blanket wrapped around a blond head. I see cheetahs and horses wearing holes in jeans. I remember the phone call to "Please tell your daughter to quit kissing my son". I hear elaborate plans being laid for neighborhood fun, saving up for a horse, making movies, selling paintings and art. (Oh, my. She IS her father's daughter.) I even hear the tiresome bickering between siblings..wait that's coming from the other room...
I hear friends giggling and see guacamole face masks and star wars films being reenacted. I see bike races and garter snakes. I can still hear her grandpa giving her his final advice to marry someone who knows Christ--she was only nine, but she listened intently and seriously. I see her bravely leaving her own dreams to walk the long lonely walk on the first day of high school into the unknown. I see her emerge 4 years later a beautiful, confident, and joyful leader. It's been quite the ride. She's been the perfect gift for us, selected by a good and kind God to bless us these past 18 years. Today we pack her up and take her to college. Not too far away, but far enough. We will step back and let her spread her wings. I can't help but hear the prophetic words from strangers as I held her in my arms back in Texas: "Enjoy her. They grow up so fast."
Friday, August 22, 2014
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Lessons Learned
It was "one of those days"--too long for a facebook post but not really worth blogging about. But I'm going to blog it anyway....
It started with a realization that time is running out to get my girl ready for college, that today was my last chance to do grocery shopping for camping, that we will be gone during high school registration, that my son still hasn't taken that test at the community college he needed for advanced history...or something like that, and that camping is just the day after my daughter gets her wisdom teeth out and THAT happens...tomorrow. Which brings us back to this morning when I realized I needed to go with her to the airport to drop off her friend Sarah, because Ikea is at the airport. Ikea! Nuff said about that. So here it is... advice from those who've left a child at the airport curb intending to pick them up again in a few minutes:
1) Make sure your children know your cell phone number for when they send you off to the cell phone waiting area at the airport.
2) Make sure they haven't left their cell phone in the car with you.
3)Make sure you don't listen to the radio in the cell phone waiting area just in case they call their own cell phone (because of #1) which is on vibrate.
4)Make sure your child knows that pay phones exist.
5)Make sure your child knows what to do when separated, because them WALKING to the cell phone area while you have driven back to the airport to have them paged? Just doesn't work out well.
6)If the dash board starts vibrating while trying to call your child, it really isn't a good sign. In fact, it's a bad sign. Check the tiny cubby underneath the dash. It will be the beginning of a nightmare.
7)Know what your child is wearing. Calling home to see if your younger children remember will lead to disappointment.
8)Know that when you page your child on the white courtesy phone, you are now stuck at the United ticket counter until they respond to your page. (Unless you finally get a call from your husband informing you that your child is waiting at the parking pay stations.)
9)Pray. And don't think too much about the news.
10) When you are finally reunited and the day is basically gone and you are both emotionally and physically drained, and you are very thirsty, and Starbucks is OUT OF LEMONADE for the shaken iced tea lemonades, don't sip your child's iced coffee. It is NOT satisfying and will only suck the moisture from your tongue and leave a horrible aftertaste and you will only regret it and further confirm that you will never,ever, ever be a coffee person.
So after all of that, we did do Ikea and really didn't care any more. You can't decide between yellow, gray or pink for your dorm room? Who cares? Just throw a little of each in the cart. It doesn't even matter.
And then, to shorten the fiasco, Ryan offered to do my Winco shopping. I gave him bits of my list at a time over the phone--loudly. I was in Target. He was in Winco saying "what?" and I was shouting random things like: "Little Smokies!" and "Macaroni!" in the towel aisle.
Then we finally met up at Costco and did THAT, and then I rode home with Ryan in his car. (Have I said how great my husband is? He is great! Because of him we got home an hour earlier with his help.) So we rode home in his hot Hyundai with the windows down, shouting our conversation over the rush of air and enjoying the beautiful sunset with our daughter following behind. Tomorrow, we will be up early for the wisdom teeth extraction and another adventure. I am wondering if back at PDX they are still paging her every fifteen minutes..... I guess we'll see in two weeks when I go back to pick up my Virginia family.
It started with a realization that time is running out to get my girl ready for college, that today was my last chance to do grocery shopping for camping, that we will be gone during high school registration, that my son still hasn't taken that test at the community college he needed for advanced history...or something like that, and that camping is just the day after my daughter gets her wisdom teeth out and THAT happens...tomorrow. Which brings us back to this morning when I realized I needed to go with her to the airport to drop off her friend Sarah, because Ikea is at the airport. Ikea! Nuff said about that. So here it is... advice from those who've left a child at the airport curb intending to pick them up again in a few minutes:
1) Make sure your children know your cell phone number for when they send you off to the cell phone waiting area at the airport.
2) Make sure they haven't left their cell phone in the car with you.
3)Make sure you don't listen to the radio in the cell phone waiting area just in case they call their own cell phone (because of #1) which is on vibrate.
4)Make sure your child knows that pay phones exist.
5)Make sure your child knows what to do when separated, because them WALKING to the cell phone area while you have driven back to the airport to have them paged? Just doesn't work out well.
6)If the dash board starts vibrating while trying to call your child, it really isn't a good sign. In fact, it's a bad sign. Check the tiny cubby underneath the dash. It will be the beginning of a nightmare.
7)Know what your child is wearing. Calling home to see if your younger children remember will lead to disappointment.
8)Know that when you page your child on the white courtesy phone, you are now stuck at the United ticket counter until they respond to your page. (Unless you finally get a call from your husband informing you that your child is waiting at the parking pay stations.)
9)Pray. And don't think too much about the news.
10) When you are finally reunited and the day is basically gone and you are both emotionally and physically drained, and you are very thirsty, and Starbucks is OUT OF LEMONADE for the shaken iced tea lemonades, don't sip your child's iced coffee. It is NOT satisfying and will only suck the moisture from your tongue and leave a horrible aftertaste and you will only regret it and further confirm that you will never,ever, ever be a coffee person.
So after all of that, we did do Ikea and really didn't care any more. You can't decide between yellow, gray or pink for your dorm room? Who cares? Just throw a little of each in the cart. It doesn't even matter.
And then, to shorten the fiasco, Ryan offered to do my Winco shopping. I gave him bits of my list at a time over the phone--loudly. I was in Target. He was in Winco saying "what?" and I was shouting random things like: "Little Smokies!" and "Macaroni!" in the towel aisle.
Then we finally met up at Costco and did THAT, and then I rode home with Ryan in his car. (Have I said how great my husband is? He is great! Because of him we got home an hour earlier with his help.) So we rode home in his hot Hyundai with the windows down, shouting our conversation over the rush of air and enjoying the beautiful sunset with our daughter following behind. Tomorrow, we will be up early for the wisdom teeth extraction and another adventure. I am wondering if back at PDX they are still paging her every fifteen minutes..... I guess we'll see in two weeks when I go back to pick up my Virginia family.
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