My Baby Girl

    January 29, 2013. I remember that first birthday so clearly, her arrival making my family complete and perfect.  And now, she's not here. And it's her birthday. I ache to think of her alone in this world without me. Can I ever stop thinking of her as that tiny, beautiful baby girl, so precious and dependent on me? I knew when she was born, that to stay in the womb would mean death.  She was meant to breathe air, not fluid. She was meant to taste and enjoy food, not continue to be fed through a feeding tube.  Her nine months of total dependency on me were always intended to be temporary. And the same is true now.  She has had another new beginning, a transition nearly as dramatic as that first.  I know that to stay in the womb of our home would have stunted her. She has to fill her lungs with the air of her new world. She has to experience hunger, cold, pain. She has to cry. She has to want.  And we have to let her go, to step aside, to give up what is most precious to us. For her sake and His glory. Because when she tastes the world's offerings -- and remains unsatisfied -- she will know in a new way just how desperately she needs her Father. She will recognize that the hunger and thirst can only be sated by Him. And then... oh, then, that wonderful laugh will be even more rich and real.  She will be more ours than she ever was, because she -- and we -- will be more His than we ever were.