A Letter to My Future Son In Law

Dear Future Son In Law,

She's almost five now and I get excited thinking about the kind of story you two will share one day.  I imagine the moments when she'll come home and she'll be all googly eyed for you and tell me all the grand feelings she'll have for you.  It is one of my favorite parts of being a mama to girls.

But I really want you to know something...

The day we give her away to you, we will give you the biggest parts of our lives.  We will hand you the first moments we held her.  We will hand you the cries and cuddles, the giggles and all the emotional roller coasters we'll have gone through.  We'll hand you every piece of her, because on that day, she will be yours.  All yours.

We may not like you at first, well, daddy may not like you at first, and it may be rough awkward times, and I'll give you a piece of advice now, hold tight, don't waiver, stick around, and he'll come around.  Because you have to understand, you aren't just getting his daughter, YOU WILL BE GETTING WHAT HE WAS MADE FOR.

I pray now that you'll grow into a gentleman that understands that her heart is our heart.  Her face, her hands, her hair, and those big brown eyes are everything we lived to protect, nurture, and raise to be the beauty you'll fall in love with.  We have staked our entire lives on investing all that we have into raising her so that she'll be the woman you want to raise kids with, the wife you look forward to coming home to, and the woman you spend the rest of your life being loved on by.

Currently, she's excited to meet you.  We pray at night that you are nice to her and other people, that you have a beard like daddy, and have lots of hair on top of your head.  Sometimes, she'll pretend you two are already married and she'll prance around the house in my high heels and tease her daddy that you two got married without his blessing.  She's currently named you Billy Jerry, so we'll see how that goes.

She's excited.  And I'm excited.

Because when we hand her to you, we are not only fully stepping back and giving you our little girl, but we're also asking you to be a part of us.  I'm excited for the times your father in law will stand out in the driveway and chat with you for hours.  I'm excited for the first time we'll hug you and congratulate you on our grand-baby.  I'm excited for the family gatherings and all the memories we'll make once you're in our lives.

Because you falling for her, means you're her family now and you become ours.  And I promise, that while we prune her for the years ahead, we'll be pruning ourselves for fully letting go and letting you in.  I promise you that.

So, future son in law, I've got you deep in my heart as I pray for my daughter and as I give of myself each day, because I know our time with her is limited and one day she'll be yours.

In Jesus Name I rest my trust for the two of you.

Love,
You're future mother in law
(P.S. I promise that name will be a pleasant one you speak)

Starting Again

Here I am again.

I've been really torn about this blogging thing.  Really torn.  I've liked being away for a while.  Some of you may have been following me on instagram, but pulling away from blogging and facebook has given me time to really process some hurts, some missteps, and whether or not I'd get back into blogging.

And here's the truth... I'm nobody famous.  I'm not a professional.  I'm not that cool.  I definitely don't have my stuff together.  I don't have special home maker skills and I most definitely am not a writer.  And those truths about me have been the whispers that have kept me from blogging.

Why in the world would anyone want to keep up with me?  Who do I think I am that I can have a blog and claim to be an expert on anything?  I've written so many posts that never get published and just save as draft.  Sometimes it's been good for me to write as I process experiences, imagine it's been read and move on. Why do I need the "published" feature anyway?  Why is it that I need to put this "stuff" out there?

I thought long and hard on the season in my life that blogging was a big part of.  Blogging was a way for me to find a comfort that life isn't meant to be lived alone.  I was challenged to live harder, with more adventure and fervor than I could have ever imagined on my own.  During that time in my life, I didn't have friends to socialize with and come over for play dates or invite me to coffee.  I slowly started escaping into a digital world.  And I remember the email I received from someone calling me out and claiming that my "blogging" friends only tell me what I want to hear and that my reality is far from anything I could find on the internet...........

I remember that email well.  I slowly started questioning everything I'd put online.  My posts were few and farther and farther apart.  I let her words eat at me.

What I forgot was that I did indeed have a reality.  My blogger friends started inviting me to coffee.  My blogger friends were the ones who skyped me on days that I needed someone to talk to.  My blogger friends became REAL life friends.

And still to this day, many of them still are.  They are the ones that hold me accountable.  Challenge me when I get complacent, and are some of the first to send a note or email when they know that I'm having a hard time.  It became a community of people who were going through similar things in life, having similar convictions, and wanting the same kind of adventure.  We found encouragement in each others writings and well, we really liked looking at each other's pretty pictures we'd take, because YES, sometimes I dress up JUST FOR A PHOTO and NO, I do not look like this all the time.

So I got my booty in check and realized that I want to blog because I love it.  I want to blog because I can.  I want to blog because for me, blogging is a part of my personality- the whacky, crazy, storytelling, mind processing personality- and its my avenue to let ya'll into a part of our lives as we carry on this adventure of ministry and how we're navigating the waters of a life of living simply.

So if you're still around.... maybe, just maybe you are.........  I'm starting again.  So here goes.........