5J: When Your Girl Has a Birthday

Hey!

Happy Birthday Sweet Girl.

It's difficult to believe 20 years have passed since that morning you came. Twenty years!

I wish I could thumb through the years like the pages of a treasured book. I'd linger over my favorite parts and read and re-read the parts I've forgotten in an attempt to imprint them on my brain.

Liz has an internship at our local paper this summer. This is her first published article with her byline.

I'd linger over all those late night and early morning feedings that seemed endless, I'd put my fingeron the page and scroll carefully over all the antics that made you scream, "Mom, watch me!", so I wouldn't miss them this time. I would go slow on the parts where you used to climb up on my lap and wrap your arms around my neck when you were so tired and done you didn't know what else to do with yourself. The nights when we would read together and you would be so completely absorbed you would hardly move a muscle were some of my favorites, and then all the crying parts, the throwing fit parts, the difficult parts I would want to re-read to make sure that even during those parts, especially during those parts, you knew how much I love you.

We took off to Chicago last weekend. Liz led the way to the protest and stood in the heat with her sign.

You just left to celebrate your day with your group of friends. You met up here to talk, laugh, and give everyone a chance to arrive, and then you headed out to Kyla's jeep right in the middle of a cloud of laughing, hollering and goofy girls.

One of my favorites. Notice who's leading the charge.

A celebration of life to be sure.

Now I'll celebrate my way. I'll bake you a cake in this stillness, all alone with remembering that day twenty years ago when it was time for you to arrive.

Precious Lord. We are unworthy of your gifts, your blessing, your grace.

Happy Birthday Elizabeth Grace!

You are pledged to Him, full of unmerited favour, fully and truly known and loved by Him.

I'll love you forever.