Dear Finley.....

I hold you in my arms, young princess. You sleep in sweet, heavenly peace. Yet I wonder if you'd be so calm if you knew the truth: I am your mother. And I don't have the slightest idea what I'm doing. You are my first baby, my only daughter. I was just getting used to being pregnant, and now here you are! And you are so very, very real.

Your dad and I have been preparing for your arrival for months. I've read the books Well, some of them. A few pages. I've listened to my friends, who give me endless advice. They're all experienced, you know, because they have their own babies. But, you're different. You're my baby. And they don't know a thing about you.

I do. I know all about the way you kick and wiggle. I've already memorized the way you smell, like a fresh from the earth daffodil. I know about the way your lower lip quivers when you're about to cry. I know that your wispy hair is the most luxuriously soft thing that has ever touched my cheek.

Yet I admit that there's much I don't know. In the hospital I had to be instructed how to nurse you. Last week my mother showed me how to bathe you in the sink. I don't have a clue how to clear up diaper rash. I get queasy at the sight of blood. I don't sew. I 'm not good at salt dough maps. My math skills are atrocious. And you might as well know right up front that wiggly teeth give me the heebie-jeebies.

However, I am very good at baking cookies. I know how to make indoor tents on rainy days. And I have my mother's wonderful sense of humor, so I know how to laugh and make you laugh. I'll sing you sweet songs in the night. I'll pray for you every day. I'll let you keep any animal you catch, as long as you feed it. I'll call your imaginary friends by their first name. I'll put love notes in your lunch box, and I'll swim with you in the ocean, even when I'm old. Perhaps the best thing about being your mother is that I get to share these privileges with the most incredible man in the world....your father.

Any credentials I have to offer can't be earned over coffee with friends...they can't be taught by a book. to me they are tender intuitions, whispers from God, eternal insights only a mother can know when her baby is cradled in her arms as you are now in mine. This is where the Lord will teach me how to mother you by heart.
I love you!

**This was forwarded to me from a friend and although I did not write it I could not have said it better myself.