We are (and were) all very excited that she is here. It is an amazing thing every time a new baby comes into our lives. We have a lot of kids, and as the oldest, I remember when most of them were born. (The only ones I don’t remember are the triplets and Elijah.) I am always very excited when God gift us with a new little one to love, to hold, to cuddle, and – yes – to spoil. To me, the gift of a child is one of the most precious things God can give next to salvation, and I treasure every one that is brought into our home. Addy is the sweetest little baby I have ever seen (although, I do say that about all of them). She loves to cuddle. Seriously. Most of the time, she won’t sleep in her bouncy seat because she just wants to be held. She won’t sleep in her crib- only by Mom’s side.
The best pic I could get. I stole it off my family's blog....
More will come later.
Addy brings much joy, but to me- and I know to my parents- she brings reminders that this won’t last long. She is a baby now, but only for a year or so. then she’ll be a squirmy toddler, first crawling, then running around, yelling, learning to talk, and before we know it, she’ll be a ‘big girl’ not a little baby. I know that I think about this often. How she is our last until one of us kids grows up and gets married. (A scary thought!) I find myself hogging her as much as possible, trying to hang on to every bit of this I can. I think my siblings are probably getting tired of it.
I say all this to say that God gives many great gifts to us, but they don’t last forever. Eventually it will be gone, and all we will have left is memories. My Mom knows this and she is taking truckloads of pictures so she’ll have as many reminders as possible of her children. But as I was saying, I have a tendency to take things for granted. Lots of people do. I tend to just forget that I may not have ‘this’ forever. We should be thankful for what we have now, and make the best of it because we don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Think about Job, in the Bible. He was extremely blessed, but all it took was probably a few weeks and everything was torn away from him. His children, his riches, his health. His friends were convinced he had done something horribly wrong, and his wife suggested he ‘curse God and die’. In the end, God increased all of the riches he had had before, and restored his blessing, and Job’s faith had been tested and proved, but that’s not the point. The point is that it could happen to any of us. My Mom always told me as a little kid, “Don’t take it for granted, Keona. One day you might not have it any more.” She and I have been telling my siblings the same thing about Addy. “One day she’ll be grown up, and you’ll wish you had taken this chance to hold her. You can go play outside any time.”
God wants us to enjoy the blessings He gives us, but he also doesn't want us to get used to ‘a life of luxury’ or having things that could cause us to put our trust in something else, or to think that we don’t need Him any more. If we just keep expecting to get stuff from God and never give anything back, what kind of relationship is that? Or if we start depending on the riches He may have given us instead of trusting in Him? I find that little Addy is a wonderful picture of that. Right now, everything is perfect. We are enjoying our lovely, cuddly little baby, and it would be easy to forget that God gave this to us. We have to remember that He gave this to us to enjoy, but not to put our trust in. We are to put our trust in Him.
Okay, now that I've shared that, I just want to let you know that my Mom wrote a blog post about Addy's birth on our family blog, and you can read that for more details.
Thanks to everyone who has prayed for us and has been excited along with us as we anticipated her birth!
