Charleigh Turns 4

I just read over the birthday post I wrote for Charleigh, last year, and it warms my heart how she's so much the same. I feel like I knew her, then...like I know her, now.

She's physically powerful in a way that none of her siblings is or has been. She doesn't know her own strength. She slams into us out of love. Out of love, she durn near pulls our arms from their sockets and squeezes out our very stuffin's.

She climbs my body as if she were Jack, sometimes, as if my leg were a beanstalk. She can whine like none other. She can become both Pete and Repeat, placing her demands on an endless loop. She can wear a mama down, if I'm being honest.

But I know--and try to remember!--to scoop her up when she's working me, because chances are: her love tank's gone empty.

I have much to teach Charleigh about being filled and fulfilled, and I know, already: parenting her effectively will require my entering much of my old pain. I feel a little intimidated by this, sometimes, but mostly unafraid. I believe God chooses us for one another; don't you? It seems possible that I was chosen for Charleigh because of that (my old) self, and this. I believe I can and will take care of her, now. Based upon something the Lord whispered into my spirit, I believe Charleigh will take care of me, later.

We love Charleigh exactly as God made her: argumentative, defiant, exhibitionistic, fearless, generous, loving, rebellious, sassy, and strong-willed (strong-everything!). We haven't words to tell how thankful we are for all the light she catches and casts among us.

Kicking up fairy dust. Honest lens flare in this photo and the next.