Unconditional Love

Our first picture as parents!  2/13/2002

10 years ago I was changed forever.  I became a mom!  Sweet Emily Madisen made her appearance at 11:30am on February 13th after about 11 hrs of labor.  I remember some of those first moments in the hospital with this little creature that they said was mine.  It was hard to imagine having another human being who was mine.  She was so tiny and so snuggly and so sweet.  It may have been the good drugs, but I kept having dreams and thoughts that she and I were one...and that we were seperating in those moments - now that I could see her and stare into her sweet face.  Don't you just love remembering those precious moments?  Ahhh...and the smell - loved to bury my nose in my babies heads...mmmm.

This morning I woke Emily up in her twin sized bed that she fits quite well.  She was tired and grumpy and snapped/sassed at me several times.  It was a pretty rotten morning for us actually - she stomped off to the bus without even a goodbye.  Do I love her less?  Not at all.  She nor Evan could not do anything to make me love them less.  Unconditional love.   I understand it now that I am a mom.  And I understand it more with every day that passes as a parent.  But, I probably only have a glimpse of the intensity of the love that God has for me and you.  He loves us with a love that surpasses knowledge - one we can not grasp fully.  But one, that if you can grasp a bit - you will never be the same!  My prayer for each of you reading this is this - first that you allow God into your heart and second that you grasp how much He loves you!

Ephesians 3:16-19  "I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

Happy Valentine's Day, friends! 

Emily Madisen - age 10