Reveling and Remembering

Today was a good day. It started out with a golf benefit for Great Lakes Christian College at Centennial Acres golf course. There's nothing better that great golf with friends that benefits GLCC. After golf and lunch, I came home, mowed part of the yard, and then spent time with Hannah and Steph. It has been a great day.

Tonight Hannah was extra cute. She's always cute, but tonight it was painful cute. When we went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, she just had that, "I'm cute and I know it look" on her face. Momma had just taken her hair out of her ponytail and it was falling forward around her face. I seriously could have sat there for hours and just looked at her face, her glistening eyes, everything about her. It was the same way last night. I finally got the burn permit for my fire pit out back. Last night was our first fire of the season. Hannah went with me to help build the fire. She was there right beside me, crinkling paper and breaking sticks. After we had the fire going, I played my tin whistle and she sang along. A little bit later, the elementary kids came over during their sleepover for smores. As they sat around the fire and told stories, Hannah sat among them and held hands with Marissa and another girl as they shared one of the cement blocks they were sitting on. I sat across from her, quietly observing and watching her in the flickering fire light, enamored by her every smile, look, and giggle.

I wonder how much of now she is going to remember. My earliest memories are of things like building forts and tents under the tables that my dad set up in the living room for the garden plants he always started in March and April. I remember going outside in the front yard to wait for my brother and sister to come home from school. I remember trips to my granparents house and sleeping on the couch in the spare room. I remember watching Johnny Carson in the reflection of the door from the couch when I was supposed to be sleeping.

Yet, I don't remember any of those tender, taking in everything moments. Maybe its because I was a boy back then. Maybe its becasue as little kids we don't catch those things. I want Hannah to catch as many of them as I can. I want her to know how much I marvel at her beauty and innocence. I want her to know how much I love her, how much I will go out of my way to make everything in her life a blessing.

It is moments like these that help me only begin to understand the love that our God has for us. As I want her to feel nothing but love and hope, so our Father in heaven wants us to have love and hope. Even in our darkest hours, I think that he wants us to feel grace, love, and hope at any cost. I think that's why he's so committed to us--because he can't stop marveling at us.

Thank you Lord for allowing Steph and I to stumble into this parenting thing. Thank you for blessing us with one of the cutiest, smartes, and utterly amazing children on the face of this earth. Thank you for teaching me through her, through my love for her and her mother. May you give me every opportunity to make her life the best that it can be!