You live with a wide-open wonder.

“Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship

the Lord with gladness; come before

him with joyful songs.”

Psalm 100:1-2

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Dear Me,

You have a daughter one day, which is much like holding up a mirror in the dark. You can’t see everything so clearly, and you feel out of control–a spinner that won’t stop spinning.

When she is young, she is fast and unbridled. She doesn’t have a quiet sense about her like you’ve always had. In fact, she doesn’t have one quiet bone in her body. One day she says, “I’m literally using all of my voice!” and it’s the perfect descriptor for what you’ve had such a hard time describing.

She is more sound than human.

You pull her out of a school that doesn’t appreciate that kind of sound (I have to imagine most don’t), and your dream is to give her a world where she can be herself so you can stop wishing she weren’t.

You’ve got it all planned out (because you’re quite the planner now aren’t you?), and your eyelid barely twitches when the saleslady asks her if she’ll like being homeschooled, and she juts her thumb out at you and says, “Probably but first I just have to figure out this one over here.”

It is a beautiful world you create, I’ll give you that, but there’s always a darkness that follows you, making you think you’re barely doing enough. You take trails deep in the woods, you study a fireman’s truck, you go and watch how tortillas are made, and help her set up her very own cupcake shop at the homeschool entrepreneurial fair. You “do, do, do” because you’re afraid the moment you don’t, the spinning will stop, which is even worse than spinning in the first place.

The years grow arms and legs and crawl from one to the other, until she’s a bit older and she’s slapped a bird because it was “being mean to her.” You laugh at the absurdity and then inwardly cry at the absurdity.

No amount of “do” will change her. And it’s a real “come to Jesus” moment knowing that maybe that’s never been the point.

Because as you thumb through it, all those projects and Elmer’s glue in your hair, it’s not her who has changed. It’s you.

Ah, now, there we go. The actual point.

Your heart has stopped willing another’s to beat the way you prefer, and instead, you’ve allowed God to retune your own. You live with a wide-open wonder at a girl who has (and still does) keep you guessing, one of those bright souls who dance to the beat of their own drum and never seem to live in the dark, cold corners of their mind.

And maybe that’s why you desired change all those years ago. To validate the fact that you were scared and lost and alone, and what’s worse than living it?

Knowing how wrong it truly is.

So maybe cut to the chase a bit quicker than I ever did and love her as hard and as fierce as she is. And don’t even blink when she tells you, “I’ll never be quiet.”

Because all the loud? It’s a lot more fun than you think.

Talk soon,

Ericka