You were certainly unexpected but not even the tiniest bit unwanted. Your arrival surprised me in many ways but mostly in the fact that I never thought I'd love you without liking you first. I have such an urgency for you to be happy, to experience only the good things life has to offer. But I am certain that you won't only live the the good parts. And you know what? It's only fair. It's fair that you get to experience heartache, because a little bit of pain is the only way one can learn what happiness truly means; like the feeling your dad and I get when we think of the fullness of our lives together, with you.
I promise not to try to make sure you never go through hardship, I promise to help you be at peace with the fact that enjoying even the hardships is what life is all about. I've always thought something must go wrong in a certain point in my life because I have been so immensely blessed and happy, now that you are here, I can only hope it doesn't ever happen.
I can't say i learned what love is when I met you because your father has been such a great teacher at stretching my heart every day at the art of loving, but I can say that you've taught me a different kind of love, one that is full of worry, and I guess that is new. It's new because your father makes me feel so protected, I feel like I can depend on him, but now I have you, you who depend on me. I feel the worry of your being safe, but most of all of your being happy.
I know I must come to terms with the fact that you are somebody else, someone apart from me who will become whatever she wants to be. I'd lie if I'd say that I have no expectations for your life. I do, tons of them, but I vow to let go of them, to not try to reproduce myself in you. I vow to let you fly, to let you experience life in your own way. This is maybe the hardest promise I've had to make, because it is not an easy one. Loving you is easy, trying to protect you and give you the best is easy too. But letting you be yourself is what's going to represent a sacrifice and I am so willing to make it Ita. I want you to know that the patterns of the world don't define you. That your ethnic background, where you were born and even the way we do things, won't define what you will be. I promise to not make my life revolve around you and to not burden you with my own happiness.
The thing I am most certain about is that I know I will make mistakes, I can't do anything about it but I promise to always listen and be quick to say sorry. I also promise to make you angry many times. I will try to give you the best, and that won't mean material stuff. I will try to give you what I inherited from your grandmother who in the middle of all her hardship gave me the most amazing gift; raising me in the fear of the Lord. That is the only fear I ever want you to feel because it is the only one that will bring you to your best self, it's the only fear that you need in order to be happy. Trust me girl, you don't need to be afraid of being lonely, of not succeeding or of not stepping up to other's expectations of you. You need only to please your Father in heaven and I assure you that you will be the most pleased with your life in that way.
Know that whatever you do I won't ever stop loving you. But I will try my best to educate you in the best way possible, to give you the gift of discipline and to bring out in you all the kindness and love that I, even at this early stage of your life, know you are full of.
Enjoy your life my dearest child, you will only get to live it once.
posted by shemma @ 3:40 PM
