About a week and a half before we found out I have a little girl budding inside me, I took my journal to a park about five minutes away from our apartment. It's a pretty simple park really, not much more than a small playground, a field and an outhouse, but it's high on a hill and you can see the mountains in the distance and the valley below. Sometimes I go there just to breathe, to taste the air and feel the sun on my skin. I go there to listen, to heal.
As I sat and gobbled down the crisp air around me, soaking in the mountains and the sounds around me, my thoughts and soon the scribbles of my pen drifted towards the little one I'd been dying to meet. At first I tried to be gender neutral as I wrote but within two sentences I'd given up. I was pretty sure this was a little girl I was dealing with. I let my pen take flight and out flowed my questions and my dreams for this little baby. Below I share a slightly edited version of what I wrote.
Sometimes I wonder what this baby will be like. What she will love? What will make her giggle with delight? What will she feel like - my baby - in my arms? What will her cry sound like? How will it make me feel? What will it feel like to love her? What will it feel like to have her love me?
I hope she loves the sun. I hope she loves the way it feels as it licks her skin. I hope she loves the feeling of cool grass as it squishes between her toes. I hope she loves trees and thanks them for their shade. I hope she loves the water in whatever shape it takes -- oceans, lakes, rivers and raindrops. I hope she stares at the the moon and the stars and wonders how they found their home in the sky. I hope she tastes the world - with all her senses. I hope she feels its peace. Its love. Its majesty.
I hope she loves to dance - in that cute little diaper-wagging way. I hope she loves to laugh and to run outside and play. I hope she loves to twirl, watching her little skirt swirl out around her with delight. I hope she loves dress ups and jewelry. I hope she treats her dolls as her daughters (like I did when I was little).
I hope she has dreams - of being a princess, an astronaut, a magician or whatever else she can think of - I just want the dreams to be hers. I hope she loves to create - everything from mud pies to witches potions, castle forts to snow angels. I hope she strives to create smiles, laughter and love everywhere she goes, that she creates her own beautiful world and invites others (myself included) to come in.
I hope she tells stories - with her grandmother's gift for words and her grandfather's gift for exaggeration. I hope she loves to cuddle and that she has her daddy's smile and her mama's dark hair.
I hope she learns to share - to share her toys, her joys and even sometimes her sorrows. I hope she loves to hug and tries to wrap the whole wide world up in her little arms. I hope she loves to sing. Any and everything. I hope she finds music in everything she encounters. I hope she makes up games and gives everyone a good part.
I hope she loves her cousins and has good friends. I hope she loves her siblings (however many there may be) and trusts her parents. I hope she wants to tell us everything and that she'll always run to her mama for comfort for all of life's scrapes and heartaches.
I hope she follows her heart - wherever it may lead her. I hope she follows her head, too -- wherever it compels her.
I hope she finds love and beauty, even if both may look differently to what the world would tell her. I hope she loves others and has a giving heart. I hope she wants to heal the world.
I hope she loves God and feels His immense love for her. I hope she learns that mistakes are a good thing - they teach us how to grow. I hope she knows that she has a Savior who loves her unconditionally, forever and always. I hope she sees her life as a gift and what she does with it as a gift back to her Father in Heaven.
I know this little girl will teach me every day. I know she'll make me smile, laugh, worry, cry, dance, play, tickle and sometimes even scream. But she will always be my baby - no matter what she says.
Learning to be her mother and her friend will be the most important thing I can do with my life. Teaching her to love God and follow Christ, to find hope, embrace beauty and to learn continuously - there is no better way I could spend my life and my love.
And there is no other way I would want to.
