To most people this is some scrawl on a piece of 'Hello Kitty' paper, and to most people this is inconsequential.
The Twins Aculae turned five recently, one of those early milestone birthdays through which children properly pass from toddlerdom to child-dom! The fact that both of my children appear to be taking their genetic makeup from the Masai Tribe is neither here nor there. But they are now, officially, Big Girls.
You 'hear' me waffle on about my work a lot, and under-pinning much of that is this crew of the wondrous that share this house with me. If you have read this blog for a long time will know how amazing I find my children, and how enraptured I am by the beauty of their growth and development.
Now it is fair to say that I can count the Ts A as gobby cows with attitude. They show me no respect, are rude to the missis, maul the moggie, crap-up the crib, drop things on the floor without a passing care for my poor back (not that I do any of that stuff, I have a very capable woman for all that tidying and cleaning lark), and act their age not their shoe size - all very difficult stuff. Blessed may it be, for all of that.
I once pondered their growing hands in this post two-odd years ago. I often wonder how they will grow, into what kinds of people. The picture is the recent and much treasured work of one of those pairs of hands - as scrawl starts to take form, vocabulary increases, splodgy pictures become identifiable things and sense can be made of what must the plethora of thoughts that hitherto could only be expressed through squeal and tantrum.
Now I am pretty sure that none of you really want to sit here and read how much I love my daughters (and thank you for getting to this point). What you can see was left on my desk one day recently and has fast become my treasured possession. It strikes me that posts about funeral words, utterances about loneliness in ministry, and all other grumps and wheezes that proceed from this keyboard - they all contingent upon what is pure and real. This note is a symbol for me of absolute hope in the world created by God.
By the way, she is left-handed and writes backwards so you need to read it from the other end to see what she says. Game, set and match - perfect love.
