Today my oldest girl is nine. My sweet Analiese. With her heart-on-her-sleeve spirit, she is a beautiful mess. My hippie child. She is a lover of nature and bugs and lying on her back staring up at the blue sky. My yoga girl, who finds peace in quiet meditation. My dramatic child with a vaudeville sense of humor. Freckled cheeks and her chocolate drop eyes. She gets more beautiful every year. I can see the young woman coming out in her daily. She is my child who believes in things of faith. She lives in a world where fairies exist and God is real. But she is the child who questions herself. She has reached an age where she needs to hear that she is wonderful and beautiful and good. She is equal parts complication and simplicity, which only adds to the complication. She baffles me and makes me laugh and just the thought of her can make tears well up in the mother's soul of me. As she gets older I find myself wanting to scoop her up into a bubble of protection. I want to protect her compassion and her faith and her tender heart. But I cannot. I can only trust the One who made her. And know that she was made to be just who she is. A complicated, faith-filled, hippie girl with a big heart. That's my Analiese. And I love her more than life.
No comments:
Post a Comment