She’s still tiny enough to fit on my lap, so I embrace her, warm and snug against me, on a cool Iowa morning. We look out the window, the window with the word PRAY on the sill. Overnight, our trees played dress up; they’re all wearing lacy-white robes and pearls.
The winter air is still. Not a single branch moves. I slow to the hushed rhythms of the world, and inside, I hold this one beautiful moment in my arms. I wrap a single tendril of her hair around my finger. And she’s got all of me wrapped around hers.
“I thank God for you, Anna,” I tell her. “You know that? I thank God for you every day.”
“I thank God for you, too, Mommy,” she says in a hoarse morning whisper. Her legs dangle over the arm rest, and I hope she’ll never outgrow my embrace.
“I wonder why God would give me someone as wonderful as you,” I tell her. I shake my head over astonishing grace. Stilled by beauty, I cannot get over the God of our “immeasurably mores.”
She cups my chin in her hand, blinks her eyes and preaches a mini-sermon from a living-room pulpit.
“I know, Mommy,” she says. “I know why God gave me to you.”
I raise my eyebrows, listening to the seven-year-old preacher.
“It’s because you asked.”
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”
– Ephesians 3:20-12
Linking with Laura and Michelle today …
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