Growing with Grace

On our annual retreat to High Country this year, we included an afternoon spent atop Peak 8 in Breckenridge. Elijah took this picture of me and Grace, so I didn't see it until our return home when I began editing pics. When I came across it, my initial reaction was to smile and think, "She's so great. How'd we get so blessed?" Then I looked a bit closer and suddenly realized: our Gracie is growing up. Her once fleshy face has been replaced by sharper angles and deeper dimples, and her legs have sprouted three inches in just one year (she's now exactly one foot shorter than I...yikes!)

But the changes aren't limited to just the physical. Her eyes are more open to the cruelties and injustices of the world. Rainbows are still as pretty as ever - but a bit less mystical now since she can explain refraction of light colliding against water molecules. She's learned that, sometimes, friends don't keep their promises....and others, who live thousands of miles away, never forget her. I guess, all told, she's getting bigger - all the way around.

I noticed in this picture that my daughter looks a lot like me. I've never really thought this was true before now. And I am, also for the first time, acutely aware of how quickly time will fast forward until I revisit this shot and say, "Look how little she was then!"

None of this makes me sad, necessarily; though, I will admit to feeling a bit melancholy over imagining day-to-day life with me wherever and her someplace else. Yet, I'm also overjoyed at the gift of growing with Grace - seeing her re-examine that rainbow, for example, not as a little child, but as a budding scientist. Or watching tears fill her eyes when the treasured friends remember...even if others forget. Or learning from her determination to right the wrongs in her life, just because they're wrong.

In other words, someday she'll be a lady - tried and true. When that times comes, I'll recall this snapshot and remember that growing Grace ... like growing with God ... should mean that - one day - I'll want to look like her. With her character. Her gentleness, drive, and compassion. Her love of art and rainbows and friends galore. Just as with God, embracing growth is embracing change, becoming less like you and more like Him - in whatever ways He provides.

Could there be a greater privilege than to grow children for Him to be about Him...only to one day learn that it was, in fact, you who grew just as much as they? That, somehow, amidst the business of dinners and dance lessons, playdates and piano, cleaning and caravanning, we catch sight of God in a big way - and we're left marveling at how ever-present He really is.

Perhaps that is the greatest gift of growing with Grace.