To Ellie on Your First Day of Life...
A letter to my youngest daughter
Ran across this. A blast from the past!
Hello, Sweet Elizabeth,
Today is the first day of your life.
This dark, drab room littered with medical equipment, tubes, and bio-hazard bins is an unfortunate place to start your life full of adventure and hope.
Beeping sounds instead of birds singing.
Monitors keep an electronic eye on vital signs instead of mountains rising high to shout the glory of the one Who carved them out.
But it’s where we are. And it’s beautiful because WE are here. You, Mom, and I.
I have little to offer besides a comforting voice and a couple of hands to pat your back when the unfamiliar sights, sounds, and smells overwhelm your newly alert senses. I don’t speak your language. I don’t have a magic wand to wave to let you know it will be ok.
What I do have is a little bit of experience.
Experience enough to know that, as scary as life can be, someone will be there to pat you on the back and help you when you can’t help yourself. It may take a little work to reach out and embrace them, but if you open yourself, they will show up. Just make sure you embrace the right ones.
Chances are you’ll know them. They’ll not give you the support you think you need, but sometimes what we think we need will take us farther down the wrong path anyway. Trust the people God puts in your path, but discern well who those people are.
People are tangible. You can touch them and feel them and “know” they are there. That is extremely helpful. It’s kind of a redeemable quality of our broken nature. It’s like – since we can do stupid things and make bad choices, at least we have a neck to hug and words with which to apologize.
So hug a lot of necks and say a lot of “sorrys.” It makes others feel just a little like you feel when eating from Mom. And it also helps you believe a little more in yourself. Fortunately, you have lots of brothers and sisters to practice on! Sorry about that. HA!
As great as people are, sometimes they’re just not enough. We’re designed to work that way. As helpful as people are, there’s a hole inside us that can’t be filled with people. As you grow older, you’ll see what I mean.
The more you learn about how things work – relationships and flowers and life – the more you’ll understand that something(one) holds it all together. When I was younger, that didn’t make much sense. Now, it’s the only thing that makes any sense at all. And He’s the only One who can fill that pesky nagging hole. If you try to stick other people into it, you’ll be disappointed and they’ll be frustrated.
Yes! The fact that there is a Creator who holds all things together and has been guiding existence from eternity past and to eternity forward is mind-boggling and maybe even sometimes hard to believe. But, of all the things I’ve seen in my 46 years (yes you have an old dad!) YOU are the most clear evidence to me that He’s real.
It would take much more faith for me to believe You, Susana, Daniel, Gabe and Grace are an accident than it takes to believe that there’s a God who knew about you, planned good works for you, knit you together in you mom’s womb and has a deep desire to have a personal relationship with you!
I have to choose the option that offers the most evidence, and that is that there is a Creator who designed YOU and loves YOU. Sometimes that will require you leaning into your middle name – FAITH.
The same God that has the plan to hold the Universe together – can you imagine how many minute details that involves – has a BLUEPRINT by which you are designed to fulfill every good work He planned in advance for you to do (Ephesians 2:10.) The farther along I get, the easier it is for me to believe. The more real I KNOW it is.
So – life can be very difficult!
We are in a pretty CRAZY time in the history of our country.
Things can appear to be falling apart all around us.
And they are!
The GOOD NEWS is that no matter how much things are crumbling all around, when our lives try to fall apart, there is a HOLDER TOGETHER and His name is Jesus, and He cares deeply about you and your safety, security, and identity. And hope is found in Him, and no one can take that away.
No matter what is going on around you, cling tightly to the unwavering truth that YOU ARE LOVED. And I can say that with 100% confidence because your mom and I are just two of the people who love you. But, from my own experience, I can say with 100% confidence, there is another Lover whose love is more than even we can give you. I can say that with such confidence because when I was 15 years old, I found His Love, and it changed me forever.
So, on this FIRST DAY OF YOUR LIFE, as you sleep quietly in your mom’s arms, I want to tell you a few things:
This world is a beautiful place filled with windows into the character of God. Open your eyes every day and SEE the beauty.
There will be days when life is just hard. This is not our final destination. We are here to overcome the challenges we face to prepare us for the beauty of a new heaven and a new earth, where illuminated light is the presence of Jesus, and the challenges of the fall will be no more.
We tend to fill that God hole with everything except what it was made for. Don’t try. It’ll just lead to frustration and vain pursuits. I know because I tried it, and I’m pretty driven.
God designed us to REST in Him. If you learn to do that well, all the other stuff will work out.
YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!
Seriously, a masterpiece. On this first day of your life, you haven’t done anything to deserve how beautiful you are. It is inherent in you as the handiwork of God.
Live into that BEAUTY!
Don’t try to create your own.
Rest. Live Fully. And Love Well.
I Love You!
Dad
This spoke to the little girl in me that missed having a loving, present Dad. Thank you 🙏
Oh my… what every child should hear, what every child should know. You wrote it for Ellie but it ministers to the soul of every person who was once a child who never heard of this kind of love.