A Letter to Rose

A Letter to my goddaughter...

October 9, 2012

My Dearest Rose,

Before time gets away from me I want to write to you and reflect on your baptism. It is still fresh in my mind since it just happened two days ago on October 7th. It was a beautiful sunny day, a little chilly, but a perfect fall day. Everyone from the family gathered at the church in Monroeville where your aunt Amy (yep, t hat’s me) is the pastor. All of you sat in the front row of the church and another family filled the front row on the other side of the aisle as their baby was being baptized too. Your daddy looked so nice with a tie on that day! He was ready for his baptism as well. It is so neat that the two of your share the same baptismal anniversary. Every year the two of you can remember your special day together!

The time came for your baptism. Your cousin Noah was the acolyte that day, and so he poured the water into the font as I read the prayer that described how God used water to bring life and redemption to the world. First I baptized baby Sydney. She had lots of dark curly hair and I soaked her. She slept right through it! Then it was your turn. Uncle Jeff took you in his arms and held you over the font and I poured the water out of a seashell onto your head, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” You stared at me the whole time, never took your eyes off of me! It was like you were thinking to yourself, “This is the most amazing and wonderful thing I have every seen so far!” It was really precious. When I was done with the water, I kissed you on the forehead. I have NEVER done that to any other baby I’ve baptized. Ever. Of course, you are very special to me, my niece, my goddaughter.

Then I did the same for your daddy, he had water running down his face when it was all over. I guess I got a little wild with the water! 

After that we moved forward to the altar as your cousin Anna sang the first verse of the baptismal hymn from the balcony. “I was there to hear your borning cry. I’ll be there when you are old. I rejoiced the day you were baptized, to see your life unfold.” Uncle Jeff was holding you and you held my index finger tightly in your little hand and wouldn’t let go. I sang the rest of the verse to you as the congregation joined in singing too. Mommy was almost in tears she loves you so much!

After the service we ate cake and went back to our house to eat and play with you and visit with one another. It was a wonderful day. A wonder-full day indeed! God is good and he loves you. I love you. We all love you, Rosebud!

Your loving godmother,

Aunt Amy

Thankful. . .

^{Psalm 107:1} Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.

How incredibly blessed we are!  How often do we simply stope and recognize that?  How amazingly blessed I am!  Sometimes it's easy to forget this fact when life gets to spinning out of control and every day is crammed with meetings, chauffeuring children about, phone calls, cooking and the endless laundry that seems to accumulate at our house.  But all of those things point to blessings!  

To have meetings to attend means that I have employment and involvement with the community I live and serve in; and I love my job 99% of the time.  I love the people I serve; they are wonderful and gifted and loving!  They are constantly teaching me about God's love, showing me how to generous, modeling for me what it means to be a disciple of Christ in the world.  

To have to chauffeur my kids to swim team practice, ballet class, jazz class, piano lessons, Key Club meetings, DIRT meetings, Academic Challenge practice etc. means that I am blessed to have two wonderful kids who are bright, active, healthy, learning and contributing!  So far, I have immensely enjoyed watching them grow up and become the people that God intended for them to be. .  . I don't see that changing!

To receive phone calls means that I have a lovely mother and sweet mother in law who call me and check on me!  I have wonderful friends who want to talk to me, to be in my life, to share their joys and sorrows with me.  I have some amazing friends whom I love (I'm the kind of person who has a small number of extremely close friends I call "kindred spirits" rather than having an enormous number of casual friends. And to find people who are kindred spirits is an incredible gift!)  

To be constantly cooking means that I have a family to feed, some people don't have a family, and some people don't have food.  We have food on our table and we get to enjoy it together.  Plus, my son who is growing like a weed (14 and already over 6 feet tall) is always hungry but it so appreciative of what I put on his plate.  He always compliments my cooking and says, "Thanks for the pancakes, pizza, spaghetti, tacos, soup, etc. Mom."  

Now the laundry, that might be another story- perhaps I should leave that off my list of things to be thankful for, especially now that my washer won't spin right, leaving the clothes clean but still soaked, and my dryer takes three cycles to dry everything!  But no, I do give thanks for the laundry because it is a sign of life and activity around here.  And my life would be rather dull if these people that I live with and share my life with were not here. . . Noah who constantly makes me laugh with his dry wit and character voices. . . Anna who entertains me by dancing, singing, and conversing about all sorts of topics that a nine year old shouldn't care about. . . and Jeff who has constantly supported all my hair brained ideas like  going to seminary (twice), heading to the Trappist monastery for four days of silence. . . always leaving him at home to hold things together.  

I am blessed.  That's all there is to it!  Thanks be to God for giving me the greatest gifts and thereby reminding me of his never failing love. 

 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!  I know that you are blessed as well!  Thanks for reading, you bless me.