The Baby Books We Make With Our Prayers {with printable prayers for our children}
We named her Hope and He tethered us with a name we couldn’t change.
She was birthed in Africa’s dirt and lived more life and death in her five years than some see in their thirty-five. She saw blood before it stained and talked of bodies, when breath had left them and the ground absorbed them, as casually as if it were a Sunday ceremony. The girl we’d named Hope was shackled by a story that spoke the opposite.
And He picked me, this one who’d made a habit out of fear, to mother her.
Her days wore the scars you’d expect from her history and I was called to restore them. Hugging and holding, looking directly into the eyes of the one you call Mommy, were unfamiliar to her street-wise skin. She knew how to snatch and to catch and hoard – but to receive?
She wailed when I found her, pen in hand and brand-new birthday baby doll, defaced. Her life’s inertia had never before been given pause and these new days in our home were allowing her to slow down to a new pace, where the [continue reading over here, on Mothers of Daughters -->]
