Rakes in the Grass and Good Tidings.

I kissed my four year old baby girl goodnight last night and cried.  It was her last day of being four.  Today she woke up a five year old.  Last night she looked at me and said, "Mommy, you can still call me your four year old."

She's my miracle baby.  They all are.

Last night she got me thinking about a quote from Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm.

She writes,

"The joke of the world is less like a banana peel than a rake, the old rake in the grass, the one you step on, foot to forehead.  It all comes together.  In a twinkling.  You have to admire the gag for its symmetry, accomplishing all with one right angle, the same right angle which accomplishes all philosophy."

"One step on the rake and it's mind under matter once again.  You wake up with a piece of tree in your skull."

We all have experienced rakes in the grass.

We walk along,

everything is great,

and then....

That control we thought we had...

it's gone....

     ... losing your first child...

          ... almost losing the second...

               ... a scare with the third...

                    ... losing the fourth...

                         ... and then the fifth...

                              ... and a sixth that never should have made it,

        but did.

God is good.

Pain and suffering are apart of who we are, we can't change that.

But I will not let my life be defined by my pains and sufferings, but by my good tidings.

God brought me through the rakes in the grass.

He will continue to.

With His peace...

     ... salvation...

         ... and good tidings.

God is good...all the time.

Happy Birthday to my Christmas baby.  You made our family complete.

May you rejoice in your good tidings this holiday season, and rejoice in the rakes in the grass that God has brought you through.