My daughter is in the 6th grade and a very responsible 11 year old at that. She sets her alarm every morning, gets herself dressed, brushes her hair and teeth, makes her own breakfast and gets her lunch ready ... all of this before I get out of bed, mind you!! She has been doing this for a few years now!! Yes, I am blessed! I know this! My second child, I can only pray, will do the same, but I do know that the odds are not in my favor! Anyhow, I digress...
Mariah comes home from school today and tells me that she has a few little 6th grade boys that have been telling her she has "caught their fancy" ... and NO this is not the phrase she used, but I really don't want to repeat what she told me they said! Well, okay, you asked for it! Mom, they said I was HOT! sniff, sniff!
Okay, I now know the names of eight to ten little boys ... some of them I already know .... some of them live nearby .... ONE LIVES ACROSS THE STREET! And one is the lovely boy who introduced my precious baby to colorful language the first week in kindergarten! But again, I digress.
Yes, I know ... every mother goes through this moment of terror, and you know, it isn't that I am having a coronary issue because these boys think my daughter is this great and wonderful human being, well, I already knew she was! That isn't the issue! The issue is because she is more interested in the fact that they are interested in HER!! This is the issue I have. Last year, some of these same boys had a little crush on her, and she came home and told me about it. No big deal. "What do I tell him, Mom? I am too young for a boyfriend, and besides, GROSS!!!"
All the while, I am thinking, "Thank you, Jesus, Lordy, Jesus, Mighty, Lordy, Jesus! How much longer is this going to last?" Because I hear what her friends were saying about these same boys, "goo-goo, gaa-gaa .... so and so is so cute, do you think he thinks I am cute, do you think he likes me, " and Mariah is saying, "What idiots! What time is my game, Mom?"
Well, not anymore, thank you very much.
My baby. Who just a few short years ago, while laying on her bed with her, she was pouring her heart out to me about how much she loves Jesus and how she wants Him to live in her "neck" (meaning heart) forever!
And the same sweet baby, who would tell me how she used to watch me from heaven when I was a little girl while I would play with my baby dolls and kitchen set and she said she couldn't wait until I was her Mom! She told me this when she was three years old that she would watch me play and she always knew I was going to be the best Mom.
This is also the same responsible baby who realizing that she was at the wedding of her parents said to me at FOUR YEARS OLD, "Mom, don't you know that God wants you to get married before you have kids!?" And I said right back to her, "YES! You are most certainly right, He certainly does!" She then said right back before I could go into any kind of explanation of how sometimes people make mistakes, "Yes, but Jesus knew that I REALLY wanted to be at your wedding and see you in your princess dress, so He let this one slide!"
Yes, I know! You don't have to tell me!
My baby was told about Jesus at a very early age. She was prayed over daily, many times, anointed from head to toe, window sills and door posts; and that didn't just have to do with the colic she had, nor the not sleeping through the night until she was four years old!
She and I have had lengthy conversations about Jesus and end time’s situations. She knows things that I didn't know at her age. I didn't come to know the Lord until I was her age now, and I always said that when I had children, they would know EVERYTHING. I would never hide anything from them. I sat Mariah down not too long ago and had a talk with her about the condition this world was in when she came home and asked me about a friend of hers. She knew that her friend didn't know Jesus and she was afraid that if she died, she wouldn't go to heaven. My daughter is a prayer warrior. She has been prophesied over many, many times. She has a gift of intercession and when the Holy Spirit comes upon her to intercede, watch out! Things happen!!
When she was three years old, we had a dog that escaped from our back yard, not once, but twice the dog got out of our yard. The first time we saw her get out. We put her back out in the yard, but I thought we had fixed where she had gotten out. When we came back home, the dog was gone. Needless to say, Mariah was devastated. We searched and searched for the dog, but she was nowhere to be found. The next day as we were getting ready to leave for work, I knelt down and, I don't know why I said this, because deep down, I knew the dog was gone, I knew someone had kept the dog, she was a wonderful, friendly dog, but I told her, "Let's pray and maybe someone will find her or she will come home!" She said, "You pray, and I will say it after you!" So I said this simple prayer and she repeated it after me. The whole time I was thinking, "You IDIOT! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? What are you going to do when this dog doesn't come home!?" Rich pretty much said the same thing to me as we were walking out to the car that morning! We go to work and she goes to daycare.
A few hours later, Rich calls me at work and says, " YOU are NEVER going to believe THIS! I just heard on the radio that there is a dog that turned up in our neighborhood that is believed to be lost and it matches the description to our dog!" So he called the radio station and went to the house at lunch and sure enough, it was the stinking dog!!!! Now, it surely wasn't MY faith that brought that dog home! And it wasn't Rich's either!!!
I said all of that to say this .....
I pray that Jesus stays first and foremost in her life, in spite of the "boy issue" that I knew would eventually come up. I know that there is coming a time in her life where He won't be at the very TOP of her priorities .... Her teenage life, hormones, high school, sports, friends, driving, etc. I remember being that age, but I also remember God being in that picture. I remember being blessed with friends that LOVED God (and I am still blessed to have those SAME ladies in my life today!) I believe that she has the root of God's first love in her heart deeply planted, and I know that it can NOT be uprooted! I pray for GODLY friends to be planted in her life, just as I had, and another thing I pray for, I pray for a Godly BEST FRIEND to be placed in her life at JUST the right time to bless her, just as He did for me! I am reaping the harvest of that friendship to this VERY DAY and I know that I will reap that harvest throughout eternity! I pray that for my baby! For both my babies!
As always, I pray this prayer for both of my children, although, this prayer applies to Mariah at this VERY moment; it will apply to Madison in the VERY near future, unfortunately! And of course, as always, I always pray the same prayers for my nieces as I do for my own daughters! They are my God-babies!
So, again, Lord, I give these baby girls right back to you, at these moments in their lives, where once again, I cannot follow after them, shadow them, critique them; however YOU can, Lord, and You can do a MUCH better job at keeping them safe, keeping them happy, keeping them healthy, keeping them SANE, but most important keep them growing closer to YOU. Also, Lord, keep the boys at bay. Direct my girls' paths to YOU! I pray that they would hide themselves so completely in you, Lord Jesus, that a man would have to seek after You to find them!
I love You Lord, for entrusting them to me! I don't take the job lightly!
Mariah comes home from school today and tells me that she has a few little 6th grade boys that have been telling her she has "caught their fancy" ... and NO this is not the phrase she used, but I really don't want to repeat what she told me they said! Well, okay, you asked for it! Mom, they said I was HOT! sniff, sniff!
Okay, I now know the names of eight to ten little boys ... some of them I already know .... some of them live nearby .... ONE LIVES ACROSS THE STREET! And one is the lovely boy who introduced my precious baby to colorful language the first week in kindergarten! But again, I digress.
Yes, I know ... every mother goes through this moment of terror, and you know, it isn't that I am having a coronary issue because these boys think my daughter is this great and wonderful human being, well, I already knew she was! That isn't the issue! The issue is because she is more interested in the fact that they are interested in HER!! This is the issue I have. Last year, some of these same boys had a little crush on her, and she came home and told me about it. No big deal. "What do I tell him, Mom? I am too young for a boyfriend, and besides, GROSS!!!"
All the while, I am thinking, "Thank you, Jesus, Lordy, Jesus, Mighty, Lordy, Jesus! How much longer is this going to last?" Because I hear what her friends were saying about these same boys, "goo-goo, gaa-gaa .... so and so is so cute, do you think he thinks I am cute, do you think he likes me, " and Mariah is saying, "What idiots! What time is my game, Mom?"
Well, not anymore, thank you very much.
My baby. Who just a few short years ago, while laying on her bed with her, she was pouring her heart out to me about how much she loves Jesus and how she wants Him to live in her "neck" (meaning heart) forever!
And the same sweet baby, who would tell me how she used to watch me from heaven when I was a little girl while I would play with my baby dolls and kitchen set and she said she couldn't wait until I was her Mom! She told me this when she was three years old that she would watch me play and she always knew I was going to be the best Mom.
This is also the same responsible baby who realizing that she was at the wedding of her parents said to me at FOUR YEARS OLD, "Mom, don't you know that God wants you to get married before you have kids!?" And I said right back to her, "YES! You are most certainly right, He certainly does!" She then said right back before I could go into any kind of explanation of how sometimes people make mistakes, "Yes, but Jesus knew that I REALLY wanted to be at your wedding and see you in your princess dress, so He let this one slide!"
Yes, I know! You don't have to tell me!
My baby was told about Jesus at a very early age. She was prayed over daily, many times, anointed from head to toe, window sills and door posts; and that didn't just have to do with the colic she had, nor the not sleeping through the night until she was four years old!
She and I have had lengthy conversations about Jesus and end time’s situations. She knows things that I didn't know at her age. I didn't come to know the Lord until I was her age now, and I always said that when I had children, they would know EVERYTHING. I would never hide anything from them. I sat Mariah down not too long ago and had a talk with her about the condition this world was in when she came home and asked me about a friend of hers. She knew that her friend didn't know Jesus and she was afraid that if she died, she wouldn't go to heaven. My daughter is a prayer warrior. She has been prophesied over many, many times. She has a gift of intercession and when the Holy Spirit comes upon her to intercede, watch out! Things happen!!
When she was three years old, we had a dog that escaped from our back yard, not once, but twice the dog got out of our yard. The first time we saw her get out. We put her back out in the yard, but I thought we had fixed where she had gotten out. When we came back home, the dog was gone. Needless to say, Mariah was devastated. We searched and searched for the dog, but she was nowhere to be found. The next day as we were getting ready to leave for work, I knelt down and, I don't know why I said this, because deep down, I knew the dog was gone, I knew someone had kept the dog, she was a wonderful, friendly dog, but I told her, "Let's pray and maybe someone will find her or she will come home!" She said, "You pray, and I will say it after you!" So I said this simple prayer and she repeated it after me. The whole time I was thinking, "You IDIOT! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? What are you going to do when this dog doesn't come home!?" Rich pretty much said the same thing to me as we were walking out to the car that morning! We go to work and she goes to daycare.
A few hours later, Rich calls me at work and says, " YOU are NEVER going to believe THIS! I just heard on the radio that there is a dog that turned up in our neighborhood that is believed to be lost and it matches the description to our dog!" So he called the radio station and went to the house at lunch and sure enough, it was the stinking dog!!!! Now, it surely wasn't MY faith that brought that dog home! And it wasn't Rich's either!!!
I said all of that to say this .....
I pray that Jesus stays first and foremost in her life, in spite of the "boy issue" that I knew would eventually come up. I know that there is coming a time in her life where He won't be at the very TOP of her priorities .... Her teenage life, hormones, high school, sports, friends, driving, etc. I remember being that age, but I also remember God being in that picture. I remember being blessed with friends that LOVED God (and I am still blessed to have those SAME ladies in my life today!) I believe that she has the root of God's first love in her heart deeply planted, and I know that it can NOT be uprooted! I pray for GODLY friends to be planted in her life, just as I had, and another thing I pray for, I pray for a Godly BEST FRIEND to be placed in her life at JUST the right time to bless her, just as He did for me! I am reaping the harvest of that friendship to this VERY DAY and I know that I will reap that harvest throughout eternity! I pray that for my baby! For both my babies!
As always, I pray this prayer for both of my children, although, this prayer applies to Mariah at this VERY moment; it will apply to Madison in the VERY near future, unfortunately! And of course, as always, I always pray the same prayers for my nieces as I do for my own daughters! They are my God-babies!
So, again, Lord, I give these baby girls right back to you, at these moments in their lives, where once again, I cannot follow after them, shadow them, critique them; however YOU can, Lord, and You can do a MUCH better job at keeping them safe, keeping them happy, keeping them healthy, keeping them SANE, but most important keep them growing closer to YOU. Also, Lord, keep the boys at bay. Direct my girls' paths to YOU! I pray that they would hide themselves so completely in you, Lord Jesus, that a man would have to seek after You to find them!
I love You Lord, for entrusting them to me! I don't take the job lightly!
