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Sorrowful Yet Rejoicing

A year ago today I posted here about seeking courage to drink the cup the Lord had given me and continued to give me. Through the last year He has continued to be my strength, both in giving me courage to drink from His draughts and to give me courage to ask for that courage. I praise Him for His sustenance and provision! New mercies and sweet graces are continually surprising me, in the many & varied forms He shows them.

Today I continue to walk the path He has prepared for me. The path that still stems from the past and disappears into the future that I can not see. He continues to be my only strength to put one foot in front of the other. Even now, yet as before, we can only do what He leads us to do at any present given time. The past still influences and characterizes and molds us; that part of the path may seem left behind to those who continue to watch me walk forward… but it isn’t.
The road is, in fact, more like a river: the waters from before mingle with the current that urges me forward now into pools of even newer waters that I can not yet see. But the droplets all mingle together into one flowing river. You can not tell where yesterday ended and today began, and I can not predict where tomorrow falls in the river.

So I am yet sorrowful because the past is still fresh & raw, still mingling with today, still influencing & effecting & molding me… yet I am rejoicing, because of the beauties that past sorrows have grown ~those flowers that bloom only in the shadows~ and because of present beauties that lighten our load and give us hope for what tomorrow may hold,  understanding that they do not hold any guarantees for tomorrow yet that bring such rejoicing as I flow along with the river’s current wherever the Lord directs it.

My heart is overflowing with such joy and rejoicing ~ again I say, we rejoice!! But the past is not forgotten. It is not distant. I have to daily work very hard to hold my thoughts captive and have courage over my fears. I continue to need strength to endure medical treatments. I still pass due dates, loss anniversaries, see marker babies, grieve with others, hope with others, and walk the line of living the dichotomy of sorrow & joy ~ grief & hope ~ death & life.

So today I share a meditation I recently read in Streams In The Desert by Mrs. Charles Cowman that has blessed me and that captures the spirit of my daily journeys so eloquently. May it encourage you also, as as you bear your own burdens ordained by our Father and carried by His Christ, whatever your own sorrows & joys may be.

The Lord be with you and give you peace.

~~~~~

“As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor. 6:10).

Sorrow was beautiful, but her beauty was the beauty of the moonlight shining through the leafy branches of the trees in the wood, and making little pools of silver here and there on the soft green moss below.

When Sorrow sang, her notes were like the low sweet call of the nightingale, and in her eyes was the unexpectant gaze of one who has ceased to look for coming gladness. She could weep in tender sympathy with those who weep, but to rejoice with those who rejoice was unknown to her.

Joy was beautiful, too, but his was the radiant beauty of the summer morning. His eyes still held the glad laughter of childhood, and his hair had the glint of the sunshine’s kiss. When Joy sang his voice soared upward as the lark’s, and his step was the step of a conqueror who has never known defeat. He could rejoice with all who rejoice, but to weep with those who weep was unknown to him.

“But we can never be united,” said Sorrow wistfully.

“No, never.” And Joy’s eyes shadowed as he spoke. “My path lies through the sunlit meadows, the sweetest roses bloom for my gathering, and the blackbirds and thrushes await my coming to pour forth their most joyous lays.”

“My path,” said Sorrow, turning slowly away, “leads through the darkening woods, with moon-flowers only shall my hands be filled. Yet the sweetest of all earth-songs–the love song of the night–shall be mine; farewell, Joy, farewell.”

Even as she spoke they became conscious of a form standing beside them; dimly seen, but of a Kingly Presence, and a great and holy awe stole over them as they sank on their knees before Him.

“I see Him as the King of Joy,” whispered Sorrow, “for on His Head are many crowns, and the nailprints in His hands and feet are the scars of a great victory. Before Him all my sorrow is melting away into deathless love and gladness, and I give myself to Him forever.”

“Nay, Sorrow,” said Joy softly, “but I see Him as the King of Sorrow, and the crown on His head is a crown of thorns, and the nailprints in His hands and feet are the scars of a great agony. I, too, give myself to Him forever, for sorrow with Him must be sweeter than any joy that I have known.”

“Then we are one in Him,” they cried in gladness, “for none but He could unite Joy and Sorrow.”

Hand in hand they passed out into the world to follow Him through storm and sunshine, in the bleakness of winter cold and the warmth of summer gladness, “as sorrowful yet always rejoicing.”

“Should Sorrow lay her hand upon thy shoulder,
And walk with thee in silence on life’s way,
While Joy, thy bright companion once, grown colder,
Becomes to thee more distant day by day?
Shrink not from the companionship of Sorrow,
She is the messenger of God to thee;
And thou wilt thank Him in His great tomorrow
For what thou knowest not now, thou then shalt see;
She is God’s angel, clad in weeds of night,
With ‘whom we walk by faith and not by sight.'”

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Gabriel to the Rescue!

Gabriel is currently in love with playing dress-up. He’s not too into the cowboy outfit right now, but fireman and policeman? Oh yes please! He likes to “rescue people and things and stuff” while wearing the fireman outfit, but hasn’t quite figured out yet what to do as a policeman ~ he told me that policemen “just watch things” so he doesn’t get too adventurous. 😉 But he’s certainly the cutest little firefighter and officer you ever set your eyes on!

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“Redheads Rock”


Yes, yes they do. We have a rockin’ household, that’s for sure. 🙂

p.s. Steven and I have matching shirts with this! I sent him his for the first Christmas gift I ever gave him, when we were still courting. And I bought myself one to match. Then one of my good friends bought us this tot-sized copy when I was pregnant with our first baby! Super fun.

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Sermon

My own sweet Steven was asked recently to give a short sermon at our church, and he preached this last Sunday. Our normal sermon length is over 40 minutes, but Steven split the time with a missionary to the Alaskan bush that our church sponsors, so he had roughly 20 minutes to preach. He spent 2 1/2 weeks diligently praying, studying, preparing, writing, getting wisdom from men he respects, etc. and then confidently brought the Word of the Lord to the congregation on Sunday. I will admit that I cried twice during the sermon, mostly when thinking about how we come to Zion in our corporate worship, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect ~ it is the closest communion I have with my seven children who live within those celestial gates, and when I participate in worship, I am participating with them and it brings my mommy-heart to all kinds of humbled, thankful, and overwhelmed feelings. :happytears:

I have to say, I was so proud of my husband’s perseverance, diligence, and dedication in this. Gabriel and I helped by praying for him a lot and by giving him long quiet evenings by himself to do his study, prayer, and preparation. 🙂

Please click here to take a listen and see how the Lord would encourage you through Steven’s sermon on Hebrews 12:22-24, where he expounds on how the blood of Christ speaks in our worship.

Hebrews 12:22-24

But you have come to Mount Zion
and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,
and to innumerable angels in festal gathering,
and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven,
and to God, the judge of all,
and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect,
and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant,
and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

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Random Tidbits

Current drink: water, water, water!

Current reads: Streams In The Desert, the Bible (Jeremiah and Romans), Prayers of An Excellent Wife, Holding Onto Hope, and I’m hoping to squeeze some fiction into my life in the form of Leepike Ridge.

Current meal plan: well, for tonight we’re having flanksteak that’s been marinating in lime juice and soy sauce. Yum! I’ll pair that with brown rice and green beans from the garden.

Current outfit: greenish khaki capris and a deep blue shirt. I’m even wearing little blue rhinestone earrings to match.

Current weather: beautiful ~ mid-80’s, with a slight breeze, and there are just a few wispy white clouds in our bright blue sky. What a perfect summer.

Current prayer: wisdom is the key thing I have been praying for lately. Wisdom with parenthood, wisdom with my health, wisdom with house decisions, wisdom with prioritizing my time, wisdom with what I say & what I read, etc. So yeah. Lots of seeking wisdom in prayer these days.

Current adventure: umm, building a house is rather adventurous!

Current blessing: having a husband and two little boys who are all alive and well and steal my heart more every day.

Current frustration: one word, hypotension.

Current hobby: I have been trying to play piano and harp a little more lately! I also have some metal-stamping & photography projects I want to do in the next week or so. We’ll see if I get around to such things.

Current reality: living life in the dichotomies of life & death, joy & grief, relief & pain, balm and brokenness.

Current photo: this is the most current I’ve got on the computer, but I’ll give you two for a bonus. 🙂


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The Old Schoolhouse Magazine

Since last fall, I have been a product reviewer for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, and I was just sent a link to a free issue that I am able to share with you all!

Click here, share it around, and see if you can spot me in there (twice). 🙂

We have sincerely been enjoying the products I’ve received over these months, and it is such a fun outlet for me to write reviews on everything. As Gabriel (and siblings, as the Lord sees fit) grows and matures over time, I am looking forward to trying new things, and being able to pull out previous products that he’s been too young for as of yet.

Gabriel’s current favorites (not for the magazine though) for his purposed/intentional learning are these flash cards, and he is super excited about his new workbook (which apparently doesn’t exist because every way, including ISBN number, that I have tried searching for it online, there is “no criteria found” – hah! We got it from Costco, and I know it exists).

Some favorite things we’ve gotten for the magazine are ABC Bible Memory Verse Songs, four sets of Teach + Play Tiles Wooden Flash Cards, a study through Proverbs, and a learning to read series of Little Books ~ just to name a few.

So click over to enjoy the free issue of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine: may it bless you, and may it urge all of us on toward God-honoring education.

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Sharing My Glory

Today I attained a goal I have been working towards for about 2 1/2 years ~ I had my hair cut for a Locks Of Love donation! I haven’t had my hair really cut (only trimmed) since Gabriel was a newborn, and I haven’t even had a trim for over a year. But today was the day! The braid is about 12 inches long, so unbraided of course the length was longer. It kind of looks like a dead animal, all knotted up and sitting in a plastic bag waiting for me to package & mail it. 🙂
BEFORE, DURING, & AFTER (click on thumbnails to see full photos):

I was so nervous going to get it all cut today, but have been praying over the weekend for whoever would receive my hair ~ that it would bless them in their time of suffering and that by my sharing this bit of my glory with them (in the spirit of 1 Corinthians 11:15) that God would make Himself & His mercies known to this person. I have no idea who will receive my hair… but I pray that it would be a blessing and joy and glory to them, and that it would somehow lighten their suffering.
It was little Cora (see her story here) who inspired me to do this a few years ago, and so it was in Cora’s honor that I did this today. It was also, though, because of my mom-in-law and my best friend’s mom ~ both of whom are beautiful women who have gained the victory over breast cancer! Thanks be to God.

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UPDATE FINALE: on our Precious Baby Nine!

There’s no reason to waste words when pictures contain one thousand each, according to folklore. 😀

 

That’s right, friends, our Baby Nine is another sweet Baby Boy! What a blessing it will be for Gabriel to have a little brother, and for the little brother to have such a wonderful big brother to look up to & emulate. We’re positively overjoyed.

Genesis 48:9

“They are my sons , whom God has given me here.”

My 20-week ultrasound was this morning at 8, and I can’t tell you how amazing the ultrasound experience was. I couldn’t really see the screen very well, but everyone else could and they adored it. I loved watching their faces (to give my craned neck a break, lol). The sonographer was just incredible, talking us through the whole thing and pointing out all kinds of things to us. (He kept remarking on how easy Baby and I were to scan, and how he wished he had students to teach on us! lol) Everything is healthy! Not a single thing wrong with this baby! Such a relief and comfort to my heart. :happytears: Baby is still measuring a week ahead too, so I guess that trend is just going to continue! I don’t know if that means I’ll need to mentally prepare to deliver on the earlier side or not. (?)
And obviously as Gabriel displayed for you, we’re having a Baby Boy!! So “Baby Nine” can now be called “Baby Boy” I guess! :D
So we were able to get some “Big Brother”/”Little Brother” outfits, and Mama spoiled me with a couple more maternity things! :wub: It was surreal to be walking through baby stores without bawling. It was still bittersweet (I don’t think that will ever go away until I’m dead and in heaven!), but it was better. I was even able to buy my niece an outfit and one of my best friends an outfit for the baby girl she delivered this morning. So I bought boy stuff for myself and girl stuff for others, and hardly cried (I did tear up…) when walking through the baby stores. What a red-letter day!! And now I get to tell the world about our healthy, beautiful, medical-miracle Baby Boy! :)

I’m continuing to be so humbled and thankful. It’s just beyond words. The Lord’s faithfulness astounds me. His mercies leave me breathless.

As far as other things with Baby Nine go (and nope, we’re not sharing his name! He’s definitely named… his name has been waiting for him for at least three years!, but I think y’all can endure the suspense for a couple more months…), things have been going swimmingly. He has been healthy and super active the whole pregnancy. He gets hiccups a lot too, which is fun; just like his big brother. Grandpapa, Grandmama, Gabriel, and especially Daddy have all enjoyed feeling our tiny boy’s strong kicks. He’s already even bounced a book and the laptop off my lap! He’s a strong one, that’s for sure.

Medically speaking, things have gotten progressively easier as the weeks have gone on. For the first trimester, I was “a walking pharmacy” as they say. With three injections every day and nearly a dozen pills, it was difficult to keep track of everything, but God gave me the coherence I needed at the time to stay on top of it. Weekly ultrasounds and twice-or-thrice weekly bloodwork kept me on my toes as well. I enjoyed good morning sickness for the first 16+ weeks, too, which was kind of a first for me. It was refreshing, although of course it is always miserable to feel miserable, no matter how thankful I was for feeling miserable. 🙂

Emotionally speaking, this journey is far from normal. I have learned to embrace the woman/mother God has made me, and not regret the fact that I can not be “a normal pregnant woman,” either medically or emotionally. I don’t want to resent the person God made me just from how He spoke me into being and also from the journey He has had me on. So I am learning to be thankful that I am different. Thankful for my somewhat-unique perspective on pregnancy. Thankful for my struggles. Thankful for my worries. Thankful that He has molded me into someone who simply can not take life (or babies or pregnancy or medicine or whatever) for granted. Thankful that He has given me a history that I can continue using for His glory, as my children proclaim God’s faithfulness (through lives and through deaths), and as Steven and I are able to come alongside so many other [hundreds of] couples who grieve over deaths of their children.

So pregnancy continues to be humbling. It even continues to be scary. But because I know the weightier sides of it, I also know how much more glorious the lighter sides are. Because I know the deep darkness, I see the light even more brightly. I know deeper griefs but I truly believe I am also able -therefore-to know deeper joys. I consider that a privilege, even though it has been a hard-earned badge.

While I do not post as frequently as many women do about pregnancy/baby things, I am going to endeavor to do it a little more often now that we are in the second half of Baby Nine’s journey in the womb. We have been astounded by the amount of prayers and encouragement we have received over the last twenty weeks, and praise the Lord for each of you that have upheld us before the Father’s Throne of Grace. Thank you for bending your knees alongside us. Thank you for bearing our burdens with us to lighten our load. Thank you for continuing to do this!

I don’t have any great pictures of our youngest son to share with you, but here’s the best I can offer. It’s a front-on view, with the top of his head to the left and his chin to the right. The Lord be praised, for this boy is frightfully and wonderfully made!!

Psalm 139:13-14

“For You formed my inward parts;
You knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works;
my soul knows it very well.”

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UPDATE on House Building

At two months+ into things with our house building adventure, things are starting to take shape. Of course it always feels slower for the home-owners than for those lending their sweat and muscles to the project, since we’re watching from a distance and only checking in once a week or so. 🙂 But I wanted to share this exciting update with you by way of a photo update! Things are starting to come together!!

The view you can see of our build site (this is zoomed up as far as my camera would go) from my parents’ front porch. So this is the back of our house.

Our front gate, at the front of our 1/4-mile long dirt driveway

Steven, in front of our house! Or rather, what’s framed of it so far. This week the upstairs (a bathroom and couple of bedrooms) will be framed and the trusses will be put up! So this is our main floor (sans garage). And  closeup of our “cobbled” porch floor, which I love.

I love this view of things: so much wood, it’s hard to weed through! 🙂 The one with Steven is sort of the view once you step into our front door; he’s heading into our Dining Room and the Great Room is just beyond him (the stairwell will be at Steven’s back).

Steven and me in our Great Room, enjoying taking a leisurely tour through our home and talking through furniture placement and decorating ideas together. And then two views of the super high, nifty walls in there (we’ll be getting a fabulous peaked ceiling).

My mecca, the kitchen!! Including me standing “at the kitchen sink,” and a view out that window (love the cows in our pasture!), and our family eating area with lots of great views out the windows.

I think that’s about it for the pictures this time. Once things come together more and more, I will try to give more updates. It’s a super-fantastic, somewhat-stressful adventure that we’re on, and we are constantly amazed by God’s provision and kindness to us as we move forward step by step through the whole process. We can’t wait to live in the country and be in the house that we’ve spent so long (over 18 months… more like 2 years, I think…) designing, planning, and preparing for. It’s such a gift to have many godly Christian men working on our home too, many of them from our own church. So God is not only providing for us through this adventure, but for others in the household of faith too! He’s very merciful.

We continue to spend lots of time researching things online and talking to people we know about all kinds of “housey stuff.” We go to our local hardware stores every weekend to check out clearance items (for instance, we’ve been getting our lighting fixtures that way, which is super fun). And we’re starting to try nailing down some more of the big items like kitchen countertops, cabinetry, windows, exterior doors, porch posts, steel siding, appliances, flooring… yep, it goes on and on! I am even already looking at drawer pulls and doorknobs. 😉 Pretty exciting stuff, right down to the sawdust. Love it (and when I don’t love it, I remind myself to breathe, lol).

Hope you enjoyed this update ~ we think it’s a pretty exciting one!!
(but just wait until Monday’s update! that one will probably take the cake…)

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UPDATE on Parenting [Gabriel]

One of my greatest tasks these days is parenting Gabriel. There are so many facets to this calling of mine! It is my greatest joy, privilege, responsibility, time-consumer, and challenge. For instance, click here to read another great article by Rachel Jankovic on the calling of motherhood—it isn’t a leftover activity for someone who is mediocre at everything else, and it isn’t something to pursue because you happen to think kids are cute: it’s a righteous calling, and if God blesses you with it, you ought to rejoice and embrace it because you are forming generations in each child you raise in your home. It’s so huge. But Rachel puts the hugeness into a concise little article you’ve simply got to read. Really. I mean it.

Okay. Plug for that article aside… I am more thankful that I can tell you that God has blessed me with the privilege of being Gabriel’s mother for over three years, and I am humbly excited about continuing on this journey for the rest of my life! Parenting changes over time, but it never goes away. It’s a fluid calling, though, and I am constantly praying for wisdom in how to adapt to the ever-changing aspects that God calls me to incorporate into my parenting skills-set.

 

DISCIPLING

The spiritual aspect of parenthood is, obviously, probably the most important and prevalent. It isn’t just what I teach Gabriel with my words that teaches him about his God or trains him in the ways of the Lord—it is everything about my life. How I interact with him, how I interact with others, how I show respect and love for his father, how we speak about his siblings, how we treat our home and our family and our neighbors, how we prioritize, the things I do and say and am from day to day! I am prayerfully seeking to live out a beautiful gospel to him so that God his Father would be more attractive in his eyes due to the way he is discipled and parented, rather than less so. Gabriel loves to pray and sing, he loves to have us read the Bible to him, he loves communion, he loves church. Really, he just loves to worship his Creator! It is beautiful to see him growing up as a child of God. I am so thankful to know that he belongs to God. It is beautiful and humbling. If you ask him, “Gabriel, who do you belong to?” he will readily tell you, “I belong to God”—nobody can doubt it.

At church, Gabriel has the blessing of sitting with not only his parents but also his grandparents. It is a blessing to have generations worshipping together in a single pew. Gabriel sits, stands, kneels, prays, sings, holds his Bible during Scripture readings (he wants to read along, but of course that’s a work-in-progress…), and sits quietly during sermons (he likes to play with Grandmama’s bracelets, or draw in his notebook, or “read” his Bible, or sometimes eat funfruits…). He loves to put his hands up at the end of the service when we sing the Gloria Patri. I frequently am up on stage playing piano, and sometimes I’ll see him signaling to me “I’m obeying, Mommy” because he loves to obey and please his parents and “make God happy.”

We are continuing to work on catechizing Gabriel, although I’ve been taking it slower than I had originally hoped. It’s my fault, not Gabriel’s. He latches onto things much more quickly than his mother does. I am thinking of starting to have him memorize some little Scripture verses. He has already memorized so many psalms and hymns and liturgical songs, so I know he could do it easily. I just have to pick which ones to start with him.

 

DISCIPLINE

Discipline is an area of parenting that really does change frequently as the child grows, as the sins change, and as we mature together as a family under God’s guidance. We are constantly seeking grace and wisdom from God our Father as Steven and I desire to raise our son, and discipline him, according to the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Gabriel is very receptive to discipline, he knows the beauty of forgiveness (both giving and receiving), and his confessions of sins (especially for ones I don’t see him commit) are humbling and beautiful examples even to his own mother.

I am learning to be more vigilant in some areas and more lax in other areas as Gabriel grows and boundaries change. It is a challenge for me, but I am thankful for the grace God gives me in this.

I am also endeavoring to remember not to “share” my son’s particular sins in public. That is something that I think is really important, and so I am seeking to be diligent in that. I don’t think it’s wrong to say to another mom, “I’ve been there” or “we’ve struggled with that too” for the purpose of mutual edification in godly motherhood. But I am not going to vent to someone about a sin my son committed or go into detail about our struggles in a certain area—I want my son to grow up knowing that his parents have always respected his position in our home and that when we forgive him for a sin, we seek to emulate God by putting it as far from us as the east is from the west. I seek wisdom and diligence in this as well.

 

GABRIEL’S INTERESTS

This boy of ours loves such a variety of things! He loves to cook and clean and shadow Mommy all day; he loves to mow the lawn with Daddy and go to the hardware store with Daddy; he loves lemonade, cherries, ice cream, and root beer; he loves to play computer games (Grandpapa taught him how to play cards on his desktop and he can do Hearts all by himself!) and board games; he loves T-ball and soccer and all sorts of running games; he loves to be tickled and chased and play hide-and-seek; he loves going for drives in the car and he loves being at home; he loves spending the night at my parents’ house and he loves going to our new house to see what our builder (who he admires) has been up to and he always asks to see his room and Baby’s room.

Gabriel enjoys playdough and coloring and painting and stickers and “writing his name.”

He loves to cuddle in bed with us (he adores Saturday mornings just for that reason), watch movies together (we’ve taken to doing family movie nights occasionally, usually streaming Thomas The Tank Engine or some equivalent), read books for as long as we’ll oblige, and he has a fascination with pulling up my shirt and talking to Baby and trying diligently to feel kicks & wiggles.

Our boy can make anything into a toy, which I know isn’t unique to him but it still cracks me up. So often, even an hour after he’s been in bed, we’ll hear him talking to his hands (usually one is Gabriel and one is Grandmama) and taking them on a bulldozer ride. He has a really active imagination and loves to play with invisible things, which of course keeps me guessing as to what he’s doing or who he’s playing with.

Gabriel loves photography—and I have to say, he’s got talent. He has his own little Fisher Price digital camera, but he much prefers Mommy’s or Grandmama’s real digital cameras. He takes great pictures, centers things, and is actually surprisingly artistic with some of his work. We’ve talked about printing them up into a book for him of his own photography.

Gabriel loves learning. He is going to push me hard as a homeschooling mom, I think! He knows lots of colors and shapes, he knows all his uppercase letters and most of his lowercase letters, and we’re just about to start working hard on numbers now. Although I tried doing some sit-down type preschool things with him when he was 2 ½, I learned that it just wasn’t the right time for us. But now at just over 3, he seems more interested and like it would be something he would truly enjoy. So I am thinking of incorporating some more Totally Tots type things into our life over the next couple of months, and seeing how he likes intentional learning time with Mommy. I think he will enjoy it… but we’ll see how it progresses.

 

CURRENT ENDEAVORS

Besides getting ready to start some more intentional, purposed learning (I guess you could call it “preschool” but that term sometimes turns me off, honestly) with him—like recognizing numbers, getting more confident with lowercase letters, beginning math, etc—we are currently working on a few other things as well.

Beginning today, we are doing the hard work of giving up thumb-sucking. Ack! It’s a pretty big deal for this mommy actually. We’ve been gearing him up for it over the last week, telling him that we would soon be instituting a rule of “blankie and thumb are only for in bed” (because he only sucks his thumb when he’s got his blankie)—and then today we instituted it. So far he has been very brave and compliant, for which I am so thankful. He likes being a big boy, so he understands that this is one of those steps in growing up. We have been so thankful that Gabriel has been a thumb-sucker (from about three months old!), so it’s hard for me to be excited about asking him to work on giving it up. I realize it will be a process, and it will likely have its ups and downs… unless, of course, it’s as simple as potty training was last winter! God gives great grace even for these “small” things we work through; what a blessing!

Another thing we are working on is speaking to strangers. Gabriel vacillates between two extremes: talking peoples’ heads off and not wanting to respond at all. I know this is very normal for a three year old, but it’s something we are working on balancing. It is another obvious work in progress, and I am thankful that we’ve got a smart, diligent, obedient boy to be working with. That’s another great blessing.

 

WRAP IT UP

Besides being thankful for Gabriel’s life, curiosity, tenderness, energy, and stamina, we are also thankful for the testimony he is of God’s grace—in our home as well as in public. We prayerfully seek to use this testimony for the furtherance of God’s Kingdom and the glorifying of Him alone. In our home, in our neighborhood, at church, amongst our friends, at the grocery store… in all of these places, we are thankful that God gives us an opportunity to show His faithfulness and kindness simply by having Gabriel’s life present with us. We are thankful that His grace is evidenced in Gabriel’s growth, attitude, vivacity, and demeanor.

As we seek to be good stewards of this tremendous blessing, we are humbled that God has chosen us for this calling. To show God’s covenantal faithfulness to the watching world is humbling to us and glorifying to Him. Thanks be to God!