Love song for my firstborn

My oldest...I can't believe she's 21 today!

With her soon-to-be last initial

Love these two--could not have asked for a better guy for our girl.

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. Ephesians 2:10

Here's what you need to know up front: I never saw myself as a wife and mother before I became one. I was not the little girl who dreamed about her wedding or about having a flock of children. (Okay, sometimes I pretended to be Maria von Trapp, but that was mostly about the twirling and the singing.) So when I found out I was expecting a baby, I wasn't quite sure about how I was going to be as a Mom. Of the two of us, Marc is the feeler. He's compassionate. He's much kinder and gentler than I am. I can be a bit intense and austere. (That's putting it nicely.) But then, as time went by, especially after I got over morning sickness (which lasted all day--poor Marc ate many, many meals on the porch), I got pretty excited about the mommy thing, mostly because I discovered--as I think most women can attest to--a fierceness and protectiveness I did not know I had in me. And when, seven months into the pregnancy, my OB took my blood pressure and uttered a curse word, when we discovered that, out of the blue, something was really, really wrong...that fierceness went into overdrive. It kept me together through two months in the hospital, two months lying on my left side, two months of poking and prodding and general humiliation--all in the name of getting our little girl into the world. And when she was born by emergency c-section, when they brought her in with her little jiffy-pop hat on from the NICU...Oh, my. As Han would say, all the feels...they were overwhelming. I discovered within myself a kind of deep, core love that I didn't even know I was capable of. There was this tiny, tiny human being who was solely dependent on us...God bless her...and who trusted us...for some reason I could not discern. Even when I didn't know to take the pins out of her little dress that we took her home in, even when I actually drew blood by poking her with said pins trying to get them out, even when I accidentally clipped part of her little tiny finger when attempting fingernail trimming...she still just looked at me with those beautiful eyes and smiled. (After the howling in pain, of course.) What love was this? How could I bear for anything bad to ever happen to her? EVER?!?!?! And so began a love affair of the heart that continues to this day.

Of my three children, Sarah Beth is the most like me. While John and Hannah are extroverts like Marc, Sarah Beth is an introvert like her Momma. She is the one who most understood why I needed to shut the kitchen door in our Moscow apartment every night in order to be away from everyone. She is passionate about those she loves, and will defend them against any who would do them harm. She is our tiniest girl--I'm pretty sure John will tower over her by the time we get to her wedding this summer--but she's a mighty mouse...seriously, don't mess with her. When someone does something bad to the other two, somebody always says, "If they don't watch out, I'm calling Sarah Beth." She is an incredible big sister, loving her siblings passionately, wanting what is best for them, calling them out when they are being silly about something, happy when something goes right. And, of course, she is deeply in love with her DJ, preparing for marriage, looking forward to the time that he will be in Arkansas with her. She, like her momma before her, is marrying her best friend, someone with whom she will have lots of fun, someone who makes her laugh--a very important quality in a husband. (Sometimes, Marc just dances around the apartment to pull me out of a blue mood...not much funnier than that!!) She has always been a person who sees beyond the artificial and superficial, who roots for the 'little guy,' who is able to see the good in people.  She is a justice-seeker, a person for whom 'fair' is important, someone who passionately loves things as diverse as comic books and figure skating...just a really unique, interesting person.

When we went to Russia, Sarah Beth was 15 years old. She gave up a 'normal' high school experience and headed off into the great unknown with us. When our candidate consultant met with her to determine if this was going to be something she could handle, I'll never ever forget the tears falling on her skirt as she said, "I don't want to go. But I know we're supposed to go." In Moscow, she was basically fearless. She would get on the metro and just go places in the city, and then come back with some snippet of Russian she had learned. She went to Uganda and worked in an orphanage for her spring break. She, along with the rest of us, learned a lot about suffering, about giving people the right to be who they are, about loving people even when they don't act the way they should. She graduated and went back to the States before us, because at 18, she had to learn to drive a car. She had to relearn how to be an American girl. And sometimes, that wasn't as easy as it sounds. She had to figure out how to deal with the American church (much different from our overseas fellowships), how to not be freaked out by Walmart (that's harder than you think), how to be in the States and thrive. And she basically did that on her own. We lived in Florida her first year of college, and then we left her on one continent and moved to another. (By the by--the hardest thing I've ever done, and I've done some hard stuff in my time.) And while she doesn't know much about our lives in Austria, which are incredibly different from our lives in Russia and Czech Republic, she is always supportive and encouraging as we try to navigate these waters. She has grown into a young woman who is talented (her design skills definitely come from Marc), whose future looks incredibly bright, a young woman of whom we are so proud.

So happy birthday to my firstborn, who taught me to take the pins out of clothes, to laugh harder than I thought possible, and to love people where they are. I'm so glad God chose me to be your Momma, Madre, Momma J in the morning, Ma...and any of the fifteen other names you call me. I love you more than my own life, more than words, more than cats, more than anything except Jesus and your Daddy and the two Chebums. You are, indeed, God's workmanship, and I cannot wait to see what good works He has designed especially for you.

Love you--Momma