Our daughter turned 14 yesterday. We redid her room for high school. We shopped. Lunched. Laughed hard through photo shoots with her best friend. Went toilet papering. Celebrated .. and this I wrote for her:

U R My Daughter, So …

I promise to live as long as I can and take care of my body, while always remembering my life is eternal and the perfect body is in heaven, only.

I commit to listen long, to respect when you need space, to wait for the invitation to your heart, to gently speak truth to you in tones of humility.

I commit not to wear masks with you — not the mask of anger, when in truth I’m just afraid I’m not doing this mothering right. I commit to love you More than identifying you with your mistakes, for we all make them, and it is grace that saves us.

I promise to ask Jesus every day to help me see you the way He sees you, and to never, ever stop growing. I commit to always seek to be a better reflection of our God who loves us even when we fail and falter and shatter and break and fall right on these pretty faces of ours, feeling ugly and sorry and broken, like we’ve messed everything up when we were trying to do right, but were dead wrong – which is when He picks us up and loves us More.

I will seek to love you the way He has loved me, which seems an impossible task, but only if it’s a task, another thing to do, instead of a life which is only possible because He lives in us. 

I commit to teach you the Word in a way that is relevant to you, in line with the gifts you have and the way you think. I will mother you for YOU, not for me, so that you will grow into the woman God has shaped you to be.

When you know hurt, I will feel it with you. What is big to you will be big to me. What matters to you will always be important to me. I will not sell myself to another god and lose this connection with you, because You Matter. Everything you feel and know and fear and dream matters. You are all that matters sometimes, and other times, you will see others matter More and love how that makes you feel.

I will lead you in the ways I know: the ways of Jesus (the sacrifice, forgiveness, grace, the love that never leaves you); the ways of marriage (the service, forgiveness, honor, the love that never leaves you); the ways of home (the cooking, the food, the laundry, the grace and the gratitude), and the ways of work (the money, the marriage, the mothering, the ministry, the beauty and behavior and the ways they are linked).

And in the ways I don’t know and in the things I am searching for, I will search first His kingdom and say I’m sorry when I need to.

I will take off my masks for you. For me. For us. So that you can see beneath the surface, I’m scared too sometimes. I don’t always know the answer. But we have this in common — we are real. And that, my daughter, will someday make us friends.

Love, Mom