For Emily: Happy 18th Birthday!

Dear Emily,

On this, your 18^th birthday, I wish for you four things:

1) God’s grace to enable you to hold your feelings tightly subordinate to God’s truth. You will sometimes feel lonely, discouraged, disappointed, angry, allured by this world’s pleasures, uninterested in the ‘same ‘ol’ truth you’ve always heard, frightened by life’s uncertainties, or attracted by some thing or some one who would draw you away from God’s plan. Resolve to allow God’s Word to hold tight reign over your feelings. Hold fast to what God has planted in you (His truth), hold in what sinful emotions will scream for you to let out (ugliness in words/actions), and hold up your gaze to keep focused on what is really the most important thing in all of life (the Cross).

2) God’s wisdom to understand what truly fulfills so you can recognize and resist the counterfeits. He alone is the joy of life and the delight of your soul’s deepest longing. Run hard after Him. Pursue knowing Him (it’ll take discipline and determination). Invest in what it means for you to grow in relationship to this God. He understands you. (He understands Anne!) See all the glories of what you enjoy in life as sunbeams extending from His good hand. Pour out your soul and pore over His Word to get to know…really know…our great God. No other person, pleasure, accomplishment or goal will ever come close to your own tender and personal relationship to Jesus Christ. (Not Zach or Joe or even Gilbert!) Navigate carefully what is of this world.

3) God’s love to firmly plant itself in your mind & heart so it can filter for you all the events of your life, present & future. Trials will come. Pain will paint its arsenic hue. Darkness will visit. Doubt will inquire if it is welcome. Temptation will grab the opportunity and seek to bear its rotting fruit. Rest in and firmly tether your heart to God’s absolute goodness and loving control of all things in your life. It will help you weather the typhoons of life, and it will help you navigate the subtle tendencies for sin to seem ‘not so bad’. God’s goodness is the pure backdrop upon which sin’s ugliness can be displayed and hated…even the sin which lurks within your own heart.

4) God’s trustworthiness to so enamor your heart that you can fully embrace your feminine design from a Biblical perspective in a culture that clearly spits it out in disdain. You were created to be a helper, nurturer, completer and vivid display of God’s masterful complimentary design. Live that out. If God blesses you with a husband, pour your heart, efforts, strength and loyalty in loving and completing him as a lifesong to God. Don’t let your own agenda, abilities and even (in some areas) superiority subdue the harmony God intended you to add to your husband’s melody. This doesn’t cheapen or detract from your worth, it is meant to enhance and beautify God’s as you together (husband & wife) dramatically live out the gospel!.

You have brought and continue to shower upon us such joy. You are a demonstration of God’s love, goodness, grace and rich blessing to our home, and to Dad’s & my hearts, specifically.

Happy Birthday, Emily Joanne.

We thank God for you. You have always been & will continue to be a dazzling gift from His hand.

~Mom