I need a new iPhone. Mine is out of memory space. Delete as much as I can, I still find myself with way too many pictures and not enough available memory. I blame it on the baby. She is just too cute and I want to capture every moment of her growth, leaving me somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 photos that hog my memory space.
Go through and delete some you say? Oh yes, I have.
Only keep the absolute best ones? Yes, I have done that too.
Upgrade your phone and get more space? Sure thing, but I’m waiting until next month for the new iPhone release.
In the meantime, like my phone, my mind is full. It is filled with love and frozen moments in time, all mixed in with a memorization of each new day my baby develops. I am trying to memorize each precious moment but find that I am forgetting more than I realize. As I try to cherish my memories, Ellie is creating new ones I don’t want to miss, and so I take more pictures.
When I look at Ellie I feel like I am looking at life backwards. Her bright blue eyes, her curious and exploratory grasps and her giggles transport me to memories I have never had. I wonder if the way I look at Ellie is the way my mother looked at me some thirty-two years ago. I wonder if time freezes and then unfreezes but at in an unfair way in which you don’t realize how much change has happened. Ellie is almost six-months now. In her I see a one-day old, a one-month old, a three-month old and a six-month old and I am baffled at how I struggle to separate each phase. She looks different, but she looks the same. She is getting bigger and more and more beautiful, yet she also still looks like the tiny little eight-pound baby that was first placed into my arms that beautiful morning of February 24th at the hospital.
Is this parenthood? Time that plays tricks with you? Time that remains frozen and that also fast-forwards you so far in the future that you didn’t even notice the past passing? When my mother looks at me does she see me as the 32 year-old that I am all wrapped up and mixed in with the tiny infant she once cradled in her arms the spring of 1983?
I can practically feel time slipping through my fingers like hourglass sand and I am learning that more than the pictures I take of Ellie the prayers I pray over her preserve her story far more effectively. I pray, giving her health, her hopes and her future to God so that I can actually enjoy the ever-moving, ever-disappearing present moments that I do have with her while I can.
I believe that we are called to pray with confidence and specificity, which is why I am continuing to journal my prayers for little baby Ellie. In anticipation for answered prayer, I look forward to revisiting this post and the others like it honor and remember great God’s faithfulness. Because of these prayers I can navigate the world of parenting with a safety net of grace; because of these prayers I can live with peace on my heart as a mother because I have confidence in the answered prayers I will have and in God’s protection over my beautiful little child. I hope you can borrow these prayers for your own family and watch the unfolding of authorship that God will have over their life and their development. I pray that these prayers bless you and your heart as much as they have already blessed mine:
PRAYERS FOR PROTECTION AND LOVE
Awaken within Ellie’s heart a deep love for others, that she might share great joy and connection with others when they interact with her. Make her heart as vibrantly reflective of Your love as the sun is of Your wonder and glory. Let Ellie’s presence be one that makes others feel comforted, loved and accepted – that it is not always in what she says that strikes others, but it is in how she makes them feel that lasts.
Widen Ellie’s understanding to know how to love others who are different from her, how to discern what company to keep and how to be kind to those who need it the most and who are the hardest to love. Empower her to make wise decisions about her standards, about what she believes in and about what causes she will stand for, and give her grace and mercy to love others who disagree with her in those areas, that no matter what she does, she loves people…people like her and people who are not like her.
Inspire within Ellie a passion to serve others and a sensitivity to the needs of others. Teach her how to be kind towards those who most need it, patient towards those who rush her and generous towards those who are self-centered.
Lord teach me how to inspire a desire for excellence into my child and to show her how to fight the lie of perfectionism. Inspire her with a passion to apply herself to all that she does and give her the strength to live out Your will. Protect her from the falsehood that her value and worth are tied to who she is, not what she does. As she walks out her story, keep her from judging her worth by the number of her accomplishments.
Protect the innocence and beauty that You have breathed into Ellie’s heart. Let her never be worn down by the negativity or anger of others; preserve her perspective that she might always see the world through a lens of love, peace, generosity and joy, no matter how other people might try to convince her otherwise through their own cynicism. Give her strength to not be ruled by other people’s opinions, that she might know it is Your opinion that matters the most.
Amen.
PS: If you noticed, this is the third installment of Prayers for Ellie. If you are a parent who wants to pray more intentionally over their children, or you know someone who would, then make sure you also read the first two posts in this prayer series:
Post #1: Baby Girl Prayers: http://bit.ly/1JXz7ow
Post#2: 10 Prayers for Your Baby: http://bit.ly/1Nv2L3q
Post#3: Prayers of Protection: http://bit.ly/1DTajwW
Share all three posts with someone you love by clicking the click to tweet block below: