Watching and wondering.
Mamas reflection on Victoria’s 25th birthday.
Mamas reflection on Victoria’s 25th birthday.
As a young mama, watching baby you sleep in my arms was such a blessed gift. To hold you and think of the wondrous love and joy that you brought to my heart was beyond my grasp. I mean how could a perfect button-nose babe be given to such an imperfect mama? The tender you in my arms brought about wonders of love and hopes and dreams as I wondered what would be in store for your future.
I’d never missed my own mom more than when I held you (and your sister) as babes. I didn’t know what to do as a mama. What was I to do to help mold and make you into the adventurous and bold and bright and beautiful and courageous and creative young woman God designed you to be? (You know I could add adjectives for every letter of the alphabet here, don’t you? 🥰) I watched you and wondered.
The gift of you was such grace and glory to me. When I watched you take your first steps, I wondered about your safety more now that you were mobile, but this mama would never have imagined you taking steps 7,177 miles away to work as a teacher in a foreign land.
In your preschool years, a creative bud developed through painted/unpainted paper plate turtles and singing the alphabet opera style and learning to play the violin. In my mind’s eye, I can still see your pink bow-clad head score goals for your soccer team and the bubbles you would blow as you chewed gum. I watched you get excited when your dad would get home from work and you would ask him “Do you want to dance? Or wrestle?” You were always dressed to dance, but who is to say you can’t wrestle in a gown?
I’ve watched your sense of competition drive you to finish first and finish well: Swimming. School. College. Awards. Accolades. You have done much and achieved far beyond your mama. I sat in the front row as you addressed faculty and staff at college and I cried.
I continue to watch and wonder. The years have quickly flown by and the miles that separate us cannot and will not stop a mother’s love, a love that continues to watch and wonder.
When you fly in from travels, I still open the door and watch you sleep, and I still wonder; wonder at how good He is to me. How good He is to fill in where I lack. How good He is to love you closely when miles and time zones and schedules stretch us. Oh, how much you are loved. How much you are held, though not in my arms anymore. I find myself thinking and wondering about you when I put linens in the closet and see the towel you got for my dad the first Christmas he lived with us or when I turn a calendar page and find an “I love you Mom” in your script on a certain day… Or when I prepare for chapel and think how you introduced me to Joni and Friends and what a highlight Hidden Treasures has become for me. I look back many a day now that you live so far away and I still watch and wonder with the help of social avenues as I see you create, teach, enfold and reach. You include, encourage, and give. You counsel, harness, and craft words to move and speak and live and love with such passion.
I am one proud mama, watching you afresh and wondering too as you celebrate 25 beautiful years and flourish in a new land.
What will be ahead for you? Guaranteed, it’s going to be good.
You live beyond the borders of my country map
But never will you be beyond the love I felt and still feel when you were a wee babe in my lap.
No distance
No time
Will negate that you were, and are, a precious gift of mine.
Happy 25th birthday China Doll.
