Young lady

13 years old…

You are officially a teenager, even though the last 6 or so months have felt like you already entered into the trying years of navigating the parent/teen years. I ran into someone with grown kids now and told them, these years are hard! I was completely off thinking the years of nursing, sleep and potty training years, entering into school, constant manners modeling and life lessons would seem like they do now. Now that I am figuring out the hormone changes, social media, new friend groups, rollercoaster rides of watching you practice some independence and coming to grips that you are growing up into a woman.

I remember when Mrs Heidi, what you still call her to this day even though you know she loves you to the moon and back and you feel the absolute same about her. Mrs Heidi challenged me to pray fierce prayers about your future. To take each limitation, struggle, prognosis the doctors gave and challenge them with heavenly inspired dreams. She told me to not let those become your story, that I could talk to God about each one of them.

And that is just what I did and continue to do each time I feel the tug between being the mom of a kid with a fatal disease and yet a mom of a teenage girl in the world that wants to eat women alive.

There are things others will never understand about the journey, the twist in the novel God is writing about you. You held your head up so much that the daily struggles, the daily balance of cystic fibrosis and trying to be a normal kid. Plus, you have a mom that bears that same mentality as a mom of a warrior and a mom to a beautiful normal young woman.

One of the things I have loved watching this last year is watching you take responsibility for a lot of the load you carry with your daily health regimen. The years your Dr assured me would come are here. Where you are realizing all the fights you and I had over your regimens are valid and I wasn’t being an awful mom. You started realizing after your big jr high basketball tournament that came with a raging lung infection, that mom had been training you to be your advocate when I was no longer in all your chapters in your story.

Your treatments became your responsibility, the questions at the dr office were answered solely by you. When I went to remind you to do something or take something, I would be faced with the fact you were steps ahead of me.

One thing that has been such an encouragement to my heart is learning how your relationship with God is constantly changing and going into deep waters of the soul. Your discernment to know how God is leading you has taken me by surprise. You’re deep knowing that we can pray and God hears. Your mature vulnerability to admit when parts of God’s will doesn’t make sense, because the path is harder than you want it to be at the time. Your commentary when you have tried to back something up by using a bible story to prove your point.

Ez, sometimes I just get lost staring at you and your beauty.

Yes, your face is adorable. Your cheeks have the perfect tint of blush when yet another person tells you how much they love your freckles. Your perfectly manicured nails and eye lashes give you an edge I am not quite ready for.

But Ez, your soul is so much more beautiful, its actual illuminescent.

Do you know what luminescent means?

Luminescent – emitting light not caused by heat or a GLOWING or SHINING

That is the word God gave me and as I sit here and reflect on that, I couldn’t agree more

There is a shining or glowing that people experience when they are in your presence.

I think ones of the things you are learning is how to hold that light. So often I have heard, with great power, comes great responsibility. There have been moments over the last year that you have learned that. As we are learning to let go and let you make decisions, you have learned that how you hold that light impacts you and the life you want.

I pray that this year ahead is a year where you get to do all the things that you heart dreams of doing, while still keeping your feet on the ground, heading towards big dreams that we can only dream with God. I pray that you continue to let the other Mommas in your life, impart their words of wisdom, love, discipline and reality and fun in your life. Super cool Stephanie, Mama Liz, Sharli & Michelle, their love for you is real deep sis.

I pray that the beauty your soul longs to be is the type of beauty that is found in being a daughter of the one true King.

I pray that you continue to let the whispers of the Holy Spirit be the voice you long to hear.

I pray that have a year ahead of more new friendships, more new ground discovered, more memories with your bestie Ally, more silly tik toks about moms being mocked, more talks late at night when I least expect them, more moments of discipline that humble me when I realize I am seeing parts of me in you, more movie nights cuddled up on the couch, watching you snuggle bean.