Hey Little One,
Here’s the thing: I am going to miss you. I know you have heard me say this a million times over the course of the last three months, but allow me to say it once more. We’ll be sitting in a corner booth at out local coffee shop, I’ll look up and suddenly my mind floods with the knowledge that beginning in August you will be here in this same coffee shop, surrounded by your homework, sipping your grande iced coffee with room for cream and absolutely no sugar… you will be here and I won’t be. For almost a year you will drive on our roads with your windows down, shop in our shops picking out all the lovely things that we will never buy, and walk in our woods searching for the perfect place to eno… And little by little you will grow… You might start liking eggplant, or find that you love playing basketball, or heaven forbid you might even stop liking coffee… then what??? The point is, everyone keeps telling me about how much I am going to change… I will get out there and see the world and find myself shifting and reshaping. While I know this is true… I also know that you will change along with me. This thought is both terrifying and marvelous to me. It is terrifying because I love you and I don’t want to miss out on another year of your life. It is marvelous because I see you becoming more and more of your own person with your own huge dreams. I look at you and my heart fills with so much pride.
The other night, when I went to see your performance in the musical adaption of Little Women it was very difficult to hold back my tears. I sat there listening to them singing about five forever and thought about all of us together in our little house in Wrens… How long ago that all seems now… and boy have things changed. Our home broke. We spread out. We dealt with it all differently and we all grew. I can’t help but think it is happening again for me. I am going to places where I will be broken and healed over and over and over again. I will have to come to the end of myself whether I like it or not, and I am not sure what the end of me looks like. To say I am terrified to find out doesn’t really do justice to the turbulence within my soul. I am very afraid, but I am also very excited.
Olivia, you are an older sister so you will understand this… Juli, you are not. I know that you both watch Jessica and me live out our lives. You see us fall. You see us rise. You see our flaws and our strengths and decide what about us you want to mirror and what about us you want to run away from. I want you to know that this is a good thing. Learn everything you can from who we are and who we are becoming… I know we can be strong and at times we push you in such a way that can make you feel like you are not heard. But at the end of the day don’t be afraid to be exactly who God created you to be. The beautiful thing is you get to be you. Wonderful amazing awesome you, who I love… you, who I will miss!
All for now…
