This year I find that I am AMAZED at what God has done for her and in her! Though I am not sure that is different from any other year, with her reading and spelling and growing excessively (almost five inches!), the feeling seems exasperated.
We were at a birthday party Sunday which was held at a gymnastics club. One of the things they had set up was a miniature "Ninja Warrior" course. (It's a TV show with intense physical obstacle courses). I have a video of her jumping from thing to thing and holding on tightly while she waits to leap onto something else - and the whole time I am watching her, I have a lump in my throat that I won't think about or acknowledge because I am not in the mood. But then, I find myself watching her Dad's face as it is brimming with joy and I know that look. I know he is seeing the same things I see. The miracle. The joy. The relief. The fighter. The goodness of God. All of the 'No' and 'No way' statements replaced with 'Yes'. And now I am grateful to have had him to go through it all with me and now, yes, the lump is acknowledged. We shared in the pain, but on this day, we get to share in the joy - this joy - as well.
The sermon that morning was on the lame man in Acts who is healed and goes 'walking and leaping and praising God', and over this week, it seems like every time I watch Em, all I can hear in my head is, "Look at her! Leaping and jumping and praising God!" Her every movement is praise to God.
I know I say it all the time, but when you stare down the throat of a miracle every day of your life, sometimes you forget what you are seeing and you can lose perspective. Sometimes you see the countless hours spent teaching a single thing or the 1000 times you have said the same thing and often you take it for granted that she still does all these things with vision that would make most of us balk. So on these days, when I stare in wonder and amazement, I must pause to praise my Lord and my God. I must take a moment to remember. And that is when I fumble over my words. There are no new words of praise to God for all that He has done, just the same ones, but they are worth repeating. And that's why I say the same thing over and over again..I am amazed...again...I am grateful...again.
So, on this her sixth birthday, I say this to God: THANK YOU! And I say this to all who prayed for her: THANK YOU!
Those beautiful eyes hidden behind those glasses...
We decided that for Em's birthday we would spend the night in a hotel and play in the pools and go in the hot tub. For some reason, there were three beds in the room. K was super excited to have her own bed!
We went to the Hilton. It is huge!
M's new iphone is pretty sweet! All these pics are stills he took from the videos he made of them going down the slides and swimming around.
The boys must have been off at the big slides.
This was the view from the hot tub the next morning: Hot tub, pool, lagoon, beach. Yeah, it's all right. :-) God Bless!!
