Fixed Gaze

Dear God,
I come before you tonight offering my most sincere thanks and humble praise for who you are. Thank you God for this life, for the blessings you've given us, and the opportunity to direct our lives to you.

God the girls are doing so well. Kate's 10 months, all of the sudden not an infant anymore. Caroline's 3 going on 13, and life is just moving so quickly God. God there are really deep stirrings in my soul about the type of mother I want to be, the example I want to be for my girls. And God there are also all these things I want for them in this life - friends, a great school, happiness, talents, manners, respect, laughter, joy, depth, intellect, success - and sometimes I confess I get so focused on trying to perfect myself, or trying to chase after all those things, that I forget the most important thing: fixing my eyes on you. I believe God that when I fix my eyes on you, the rest of life will follow. God tonight I pray that you force my gaze your way. I pray you keep me from looking to other mothers, other families and the way they live their lives, I pray you keep me focused on you. I know comparison and self-doubt are not your ways, and I want to walk in your way.

God I ask you to guide and direct me, Dan, Caroline and Kate. God I ask guidance for our families, our friends, our church, the people with whom we do business and our neighbors. God please show up big in these places, please take the evil and wrongdoing and set it aside, please fix all of us on living the types of lives that please you. God let us not waste a moment of this life you've given us, and keep us mindful that each day could easily be the last.

Thank you Lord for the peace and joy I feel filling my life.
Amen

Laying down my worry

Dear God,
I offer you praise for who you are. You are mighty, powerful, creator and savior and for that I give you thanks. God this last week I feel evil trying to creep into the corners of my heart - I've been nervous, anxious and fearful Lord. Tonight I offer all of my fears and worries to you God. I lay them down before you and ask you to take them from me and wrap me in your grace, salvation, confidence and protection. God please don't let me feel worry any more.

Lord I also thank you for the work you're doing in our lives. Please continue to help us grow friendships and community for both me and Dan, and Caroline and Kate. Please surround us with Christian families we can enjoy this life with. God please help me to feel at home here, to settle down and know I'm loved.
Amen.

My Tiny Kate

Dear God,
I've been talking to you about Kate for quite some time now - though I've written little. God I know you've heard my heart and my cries for this second baby of ours. Lord thank you for the gift you've already given us, even as we wait these last few weeks for her to be born. God the sum of the desires I have for Kate is VAST, and selfish, and wrought with the kind of intensity that only a mother can have for her children.
God please allow Kate to fully develop both mentally and physically before she's born. Please make her a bright child who is ready to come into this world when she is born. More God than my physical comfort, our emotional readiness, or any other factor God, please bring her when the time is right. God please make our labor and delivery process safe for both me and Kate. God please be present with me through the process to keep me from fear and harm. God please be present with Kate and allow her birth to be peaceful and healthy.
God thank you for our family, for the time you've given us, and for the promises you have for our future. God I ask that you wrap all 4 of us in your arms, and also bind us to one another. God please keep the spirit of our home focused on you, focused on joy and peace, and on being a light in this world. Lord thank you so much for the many blessings you've given us, and please God bring our tiny baby Kate to us safely and healthfully. And please remember Caroline in the process, and give her what she needs to be a confident child who is secure in her place in this family. Please give me and Dan the wisdom to care for ourselves, for one another, and our children in the kind of balance that only you can direct.

Amen.

Changed.

Dear God,
I'm so grateful for the child you've blessed us with, and so in awe of the way she's growing. It's amazing to think of her as your creation - how in less than 3.5 years you've grown her from absolute nothingness into this amazing, wild, chatty, creative human that runs around my house. I truly stand in awe of her. I adore her, I would give anything for her. But it's a mixed bag. And I know you know this God, because you are a father, and because you created us as humans, and because you know my heart - even before I still myself to pray.

God tonight I was thinking of my pre-child life. When people say "Oh having a child changes everything...", it's really hard to know what that means. I don't think you really can know, until you're a parent and you're living in that space. And sometimes that change is hard - for us it's meant sacrifices. Of time, money, travel, selfishness. And yet I look at friends I know who are struggling to have a baby and know that they'd trade anything they have to have this sacrificed life I'm describing. It's not that I want it differently, and I'm most certainly not complaining. I just feel so deeply that having had a child has changed me in deep, serious ways. And today I had that changed feeling ALL day. And I trust that you know this - that it's your plan for our lives. That you have paved this parenting path. I trust that you have and will rewrite, restore, and renew the freedoms that I long for - in different ways than I had them before.

God please keep my heart focused on love. God please keep me focused on the positive. And Lord more than anything, please strengthen the bonds between me and Dan, and between each of us and our child. Please bind our hearts to yours.

Amen.

To Make You Feel My Love

Dear God,
Tonight as I was putting Caroline down to bed I was telling her that I love her - when we have a hard time, and when we have a good time. No matter what, I always love her. And I was reminded of a song that I loved a long time ago. At the time, a starry-eyed high school girl, it seemed like a love song, a romantic song. Now, putting my sweet, crazy two year old to bed, it came back to me as a song a mom might sing to her child. God my prayer tonight is that in our family we always have the words to tell each other how much we mean to each other. I pray that my child always knows how loved she is, and how deep and unwavering our love for her is. I also pray that that love carry us through the hardest times, and is strong enough to keep us bound together even when the world, our stress, her age, her friends, 'cool', is trying to pull us apart. God please make her know our love, and show us how to make her feel our love deeply.

Amen.

Lyrics: To Make You Feel My Love (originally written by Bob Dylan, I knew Garth Brooks' version)

When the rain is blowin' in your face
And the whole world is on your caseI could offer you a warm embraceTo make you feel my love.

When the evening shadows and the stars appearAnd there is no one there to dry your tearsI could hold you for a million yearsTo make you feel my love.

I know you haven't made your mind up yetBut I would never do you wrongI've known it from the moment that we metNo doubt in my mind where you belong.

I'd go hungry, I'd go black and blueI'd go crawlin' down the avenueNo, there's nothin' that I wouldn't doTo make you feel my love.

The storms are raging on the rollin' seaAnd on the highway of regretsThe winds of change are blowing wild and freeYou ain't seen nothin' like me yet.

I could make you happy, make your dreams come trueThere's nothing that I would not doGo to the ends of the Earth for youTo make you feel my love.

Hello to God, so glad to see You.

Hello to God, so glad to see You.

These were the words that came singing out of Caroline's mouth from the back seat of the car today on our way home from church. It's a song from our summer music class where we sing "Hello to Caroline, so glad to see you, Hello to mommy, so glad to see you too." And today, she says Hello to God. We went to church for the first meeting of UMW that I've been to since we moved, and I was scared to walk in the door alone. I HATE walking through the door alone when I don't know anyone. HATE. And she was in child care. Apparently Caroline had a better focus on the day than I did, because she saw God when we were there, and I was worried about who would see my ugly flip flops. And who I'd sit with. And what they'd think of me. God thank you so much for a child who simplifies life. Thank you for her reminding me how nice it was to see you today. Thank you for giving us the courage to show up in a place where you'd have us be. It was so so good God to see you today, at church and in the back seat.

Amen.

School

Dear God,
Caroline starts a 2-day-2's program next week. Tonight was our parent orientation. It's both exciting and amazing all at once that she's going to start school. Thank you for the MCC and the people who run it. Thank you for a community that still believes it's important to raise up children in a Christian environment. Thank you for the teachers who have a passion for our little ones. Please let school be a great experience for both me and for CC, and please let it be a place where we both find friends and connections. God I trust that you are guiding our steps Lord - please continue to pave our path that we're heading in a direction you'd choose for us. Thank you God for my family, for this school, and for this day. Please teach me how to live in each one, without fear of those that follow.
Amen.