While our Kids are Right in Front of Us

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I’m so excited to celebrate bringing my son, Bates, home from the NICU 10 years ago today after being there for 5 months. It feels like a lifetime ago and it feels like yesterday.

He was born at 2 lbs. 13 oz. and had a life-threatening intestinal infection at 6 pounds. I am so thankful that he got through it and for how he is thriving.

For how he smiles so often.

For the way he is my biggest cheerleader and encourager, and everyone else’s.

For the way, every single night, he prays with me for my dad to recover and rubs my back the whole time with a heart of love for him and the Lord. 

For when he sat on the bus in first grade for the field trip with a boy who couldn’t speak or communicate, and when the teacher told him he could sit with his friends on the bus ride back, Bates said, “He is my friend. I like sitting with him.” 

For the way he is kind and giving, like when he was 5 and heard some kids in Tanzania didn’t have a playground and he asked me if he could take his tools there to build them one. Or when he gave all the money he had earned to LifeSong for Orphans, or all the times when there has been one last dessert and he always offers it to his sisters.

For the tears, and the arguments, and when he’s impatient, and when he’s rude to his sisters, when I have to constantly remind him to brush his teeth, and pick up his tornado of a room, or to quit bossing his sisters around and telling them what to do (I think he might be a teacher or coach one day!), or when he puts the cheese back in the pantry, or leaves his dirty socks all throughout the house.

Gosh, I sure love him. In the bad, in the good, in it all. And, I sure am thankful that he loves me in my bad, in my good, in it all. 

And, that is just how the Lord loves us – He loves us so much through our mess, through our good, and through it all. 

“Nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:39

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