Sunday we formally dedicated Caroline at church. We had a lovely day, surrounded by many dear family members and friends. After the service we had everyone over to our home for lunch and enjoyed a time of fellowship and celebrating our wonderful little blessing.
I decided to make things easy on myself so we ordered trays with various deli sandwiches as well as a fruit and gourmet cheese tray. We also ordered fabulous cheesecakes from a local cheesecake company. My mom helped me with the rest of the food. It was a great decision as I truly enjoyed the day and wasn’t worn out from trying to do everything myself. I’ve included a few pictures in this post so everyone will know why I’ve been MIA the past few days. I’ve been busy getting ready to celebrate and actually celebrating!
My mind is just swirling with things I’d like to blog about. Some of them I can and probably will eventually. Some of them I cannot. That’s the weird thing about blogging. You open up a large part of your life to whoever stops by to read it. On the other hand, there are significant parts of my life that I cannot blog about at all. So people know much about you when you blog and yet there are things you can never share here in this format. There are stories I would like to tell, experiences I would like to relate, etc. that would probably shed a lot of light as to why I hold to some of the views I do about certain matters.
But although I can choose to make my life a bit of an open book, so to speak, I don’t have the right to write about others. It is one thing to mention positive bits about others in your life. It is something completely different to write about issues and troubles you have with other people. The same thing holds true in how I write and will write about Caroline. It is not my intention to write “negative” things about her here, either now or in the future. She has a right to her privacy and I don’t have the right to violate it. In fact, the older she gets I will probably write about her less and less.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Caroline and raising her. We’re starting to head into the season where we need to make a plan and have a clear idea of how we are going to discipline her. We’ve talked about it in general ways, but haven’t gotten into the nitty gritty of how we will actually handle things. Several years ago I purchased Shepherding a Child’s Heart. I need to pull it off the shelf again and look at it. The basic premise (being under authority) made sense to me although I’m not so sure I would subscribe to the teachings of the book any longer. Does anyone recommend any other good books/materials/websites? (Later update – We did not follow that book.)
One of the things I long for for Caroline is the opportunity to have an imaginative, creative, peaceful childhood. I struggle almost daily with not wanting to raise her where we live now.
Last night I realized that for the first five years of her life, the location really isn’t going to matter at all. She won’t remember where she lived before she was five years old. The only thing that will matter will be the love and security she gets from David and me.
It is easy for me to feel frustrated that we can’t move NOW and for that to grow into a sense of hopelessness that we will ever be able to move at all. I know people raise godly children in the midst of much, much worse places than where we live, but I still long for more for her.
By “more” I don’t mean a McMansion, a new SUV, and four vacations every year. I mean things like a big window seat where she can read a good book on a rainy day, a room to do homeschooling with lots of room and lots of windows, a playhouse outside, an area for a vegetable garden, fruit trees, a fireplace for us to gather around as a family on a snowy night, a lovely view outside the windows, a large studio for David where she can set up her own easel and draw like Daddy… Those are the kinds of things I want for her. Are any of them necessary? No. She can still grow up to be a godly young woman without all those things. But that doesn’t change the longings I have for her – and us – as a family.
Only time will tell. 🙂