Here's our Anna on her first day of First Grade!!!
Fly On...
Anna started first grade this week... FIRST GRADE!! Are you kidding me?! I know I probably said this when she started Kindergarten last year, but: How did this happen!? And how in the world was Kindergarten a year ago!? Was it really almost seven years ago that I first held her in the hospital? Didn’t she just start giggling a few weeks ago? Wasn’t it only yesterday that she started walking? Oh man, this is going so fast it’s making my head spin... I can’t slow her down and there’s no hope of stopping this madness. Everyone said that these years would fly past us and they were right... Anna just keeps on flapping her sweet little wings right in front of us. Before we know it, she’ll be gone.
As we dropped her off for first grade on Monday, it hit me just how desperate my prayers for her are becoming. I find myself gripping my pen a little too tightly as I scrawl out frantic pleas to the Lord. I’m begging Him to help her, to draw her to Himself, to pour out His love into her heart through the Holy Spirit and to give her a heart that loves to be His. I pray that He’ll guide her, shepherd her through the mess of this world along the pathway of some beautiful plan that He’s hatched for her very best. Everyday she gets bigger and older and more independent of her little ‘ole earthly dad and the more aware of it I am, the more desperate my prayers become.
In Psalm 127, Solomon said that children are like arrows. “Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth.” As much as you want to, you’re not supposed to hold on to your kids, you’re supposed to shoot them out there and send them flying through the air, blazing the trail of God’s will for their lives. The night before Anna’s first day of Kindergarten, as hard as it was for her to utter the words, my wife held Anna’s hand and prayed over that little arrow, that the Lord would shoot her out there far and swift. Maybe I’m overreacting... it’s only first grade after all, and we’ve still got a long way to go, but it’s tough. I’m putting all of my eggs in the basket of the Holy Spirit.
This is a good thing and it’s teaching me some difficult, but necessary stuff about control. See,the main reason I’m scared about the future and about my kids is that in some way, I must still think that I have some control over them and over what’s going to happen to them. Well, I don’t. We don’t have control over anything! In fact, our Lord said, “Don’t swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black.” Anna is in God’s hands. She belongs to Him. She’s really His child anyway, and so am I. It’s good to let go, to trust God and to let Him do is job. As these painful truths were hitting me in the face early one morning, this song eased its way out of my quaking little heart:
LITTLE BIRD
Fly on my little bird
Right up above the clouds
Sweet wind, won’t You carry her
She’s in your hands now
I can’t see where her feet are gonna light
But You can keep those little wings in flight,
She’s in Your sight
(CHORUS)
Hold her near when she breaks her little wing
‘Cause I long to hear the flying song she sings,
So let it ring
(CHORUS)
Anna started first grade this week... FIRST GRADE!! Are you kidding me?! I know I probably said this when she started Kindergarten last year, but: How did this happen!? And how in the world was Kindergarten a year ago!? Was it really almost seven years ago that I first held her in the hospital? Didn’t she just start giggling a few weeks ago? Wasn’t it only yesterday that she started walking? Oh man, this is going so fast it’s making my head spin... I can’t slow her down and there’s no hope of stopping this madness. Everyone said that these years would fly past us and they were right... Anna just keeps on flapping her sweet little wings right in front of us. Before we know it, she’ll be gone.
As we dropped her off for first grade on Monday, it hit me just how desperate my prayers for her are becoming. I find myself gripping my pen a little too tightly as I scrawl out frantic pleas to the Lord. I’m begging Him to help her, to draw her to Himself, to pour out His love into her heart through the Holy Spirit and to give her a heart that loves to be His. I pray that He’ll guide her, shepherd her through the mess of this world along the pathway of some beautiful plan that He’s hatched for her very best. Everyday she gets bigger and older and more independent of her little ‘ole earthly dad and the more aware of it I am, the more desperate my prayers become.
In Psalm 127, Solomon said that children are like arrows. “Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth.” As much as you want to, you’re not supposed to hold on to your kids, you’re supposed to shoot them out there and send them flying through the air, blazing the trail of God’s will for their lives. The night before Anna’s first day of Kindergarten, as hard as it was for her to utter the words, my wife held Anna’s hand and prayed over that little arrow, that the Lord would shoot her out there far and swift. Maybe I’m overreacting... it’s only first grade after all, and we’ve still got a long way to go, but it’s tough. I’m putting all of my eggs in the basket of the Holy Spirit.
This is a good thing and it’s teaching me some difficult, but necessary stuff about control. See,the main reason I’m scared about the future and about my kids is that in some way, I must still think that I have some control over them and over what’s going to happen to them. Well, I don’t. We don’t have control over anything! In fact, our Lord said, “Don’t swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black.” Anna is in God’s hands. She belongs to Him. She’s really His child anyway, and so am I. It’s good to let go, to trust God and to let Him do is job. As these painful truths were hitting me in the face early one morning, this song eased its way out of my quaking little heart:
LITTLE BIRD
Fly on my little bird
Right up above the clouds
Sweet wind, won’t You carry her
She’s in your hands now
I can’t see where her feet are gonna light
But You can keep those little wings in flight,
She’s in Your sight
(CHORUS)
Hold her near when she breaks her little wing
‘Cause I long to hear the flying song she sings,
So let it ring
(CHORUS)
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