Daughter of My Heart

She is just like me.  This girl-child I have nurtured under my heart.

I am up now, having just delicately removed myself from my bed, where she has fallen asleep on my shoulder.  She falls into dreamland instantly-that is so much like me.  She came in this morning to "chat".  She was out so quickly...I take this moment and savor it.  I watch her sleep.

Her morning breath is sweet.  Her skin is soft.  Her lashes so fluttery.  Her face now pinched into an awful expression-what was that thought skittering through your little head?  You, who have not known what it is like to grow up in a house that is noisy with fighting and tense with pent up emotion.  What could frighten you even in your rest?

It is gone as quickly as it flashed by.  Back to the softness of skin and shallowness of breath.  Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming.  Such the romantic, in love with happy endings, I wouldn't doubt that she is already planning her future of happiness.

She struggles with intense emotion-whoa, is THAT like me!  She melts so quickly, so completely, beyond what she herself is capable of handling.  Beyond any way that I can help.  I must continue to teach her as I am learning.  The meltdowns don't accomplish that which we want.  They just make it uglier.  They harden our hearts and require so many pleas for forgiveness to too many.  But if she can begin to learn now, rather than in her 30's as I began, then perhaps she stands a chance.  If she will just call on Him.  Cry out to the One who can take the extreme rush of feeling and channel into something good...chisel away that which is worldly and replace it with the character of Christ.  But it will not be easy for this one.  No, her stubbornness and ungratefulness is all too much like me as well.  She most likely will choose the hard way....like me.  I will teach her thankfulness, just as I am learning.  We will give thanks together.  And worship together.  And love Jesus together.

She will have romance.

She will have her happy ending.

With my hands open, I give thanks for the child she is, and I offer her back to the One who has bestowed her upon me.  Everything my heart knew it wanted.  Everything only God could hear and know and give.