Our Nine-Month-Old Present
My little darling is officially a nine-month-old today. Wow! In the past week, she has gone from scooting across the floor on her tummy to a full-fledged crawling sprint on all fours! She’s very impressive. The past few weeks in particular have been quite the roller coaster ride.
Imagine four teeth all attempting to violently pierce through her tender gums—coupled with a double ear infection—topped off with an apparent growth spurt that has left her constantly hungry—sprinkled with a true gift of spit up (try eight spit-ups this morning before I had even left from the office)—yeah, life with Sadie is in full-swing and never ceases to provide quite the amusement ride of family adventure.
Most days, she’s a complete joy to observe. She growls like a little bear cub all the time, even when she’s excited. She says “Da Da” and “Ma Ma”, but not necessarily in relation to the actual Ma Ma and Da Da. She can melt you with her now-little-toothy grin and she can break you heart with her painful cries as another attempt at crawling has ended with her face-down in the floor. The house is harder to keep clean and the laundry piles as high as Kilimanjaro.
I wouldn’t change a thing—except I would try to slow down these days. Well, most of them.
In the midst of these magical moments, we received an abruptly disturbing call over the weekend that my mother had been placed into Critical Care at the hospital with a blood clot extending from her abdomen area almost all the way to her knee. She was in real danger, a place she had been some twenty-one years ago when she almost died from the exact same problem. We spent the weekend consulting with doctors and asking God to be near to our family, as he has always been in times of comfort and in times of confusion.
Again, he didn’t disappoint. Yesterday, they were able to remove the clot without any major complications and today, they moved Mom to a regular room. We couldn’t be more thankful.
Life is a funny thing to observe. In one single moment, we witness the wonder of a baby’s development, as well as the distress of a grandparent’s illness. It’s quite the pendulum of emotion, but it’s the nature of living. To see God’s hand upon my family in so many different ways is just another reminder of the heritage I’ve received. My mother, you see, is no stranger to Jesus. No, they’ve been friends for quite some time. In fact, she has made it clear to all of us that in either life or death, her trust is in him. The outcome is not the condition of her faith; her friendship with Jesus is.
Good people leave an inheritance to their grandchildren, but the sinner’s wealth passes to the godly. Proverbs 13: 22 (NLT)
As Mom lay there in that bed, she actually went out of her way to selflessly comfort the rest of the family with words of faith and encouragement—that’s just her way. What inheritance is she giving to my children and I? Well, you can rest assured that it has no price tag. Integrity. Trust. Gentleness. Peace. Always believing. Never giving up. Always trusting.
I’m so thankful that today God has afforded me the privilege of seeing my Mom pass on these essential life lessons to Sadie. That’s some kind of nine-month birthday present for both of us.
He’s some kind of Friend.
