Life Lessons

We're learning here.

God often teaches us with pictures and parables. For us, Gwyneth is a picture.

It seems that as we grow in life, evidence of God in our lives also grows if we're willing to observe it. It also seems that the understanding of God's character also grows with our experience. Marriage has been a great picture of God's character, how he loves us, and through it, both Wes and I have grown closer to God. Now we've got Gwyneth and we're getting an even better, clearer picture of God and his love for us, and I think that's partly why God creates and gives us children.

We look and Gwyneth and observe her chubby little hands with long fingers and her feet with tiny toes that look like there are little peas attached to the ends of each of them. Then there is her beautiful face with delicate features, large round eyes that observe and study everything, a button nose with a little ski jump at the tip, a rosebud mouth that occasionally curves into a sweet smile. She is wonderfully made, and we love her. What is funny is we don't love her for the way she looks (although it certainly is a perk to parenthood) and as far as functioning, she, like all other 6 week olds is not able to interact much with us. She can't give us anything, except her poop, pee, hunger, cries, and to us a lack of sleep, but we still love her like we've never loved anything else and it doesn't make any sense.

I think that when God looks at us, he looks at us the same way we look at Gwyneth - with love, an inexplicable love. Only his love is infinitely deeper for us. We can't give God a whole lot, and when we give him something, it's usually not good, it's often trouble (like Gwyneth's endless dirty diapers, wails, and needs for milk, time and sleep). But even with all the trouble we give him, I think he still looks at us and marvels at his children, and he longs to be close to us, the way I long to smother Gwyneth with kisses every time I look at her - even when she's giving us trouble.

This is a beautiful picture.