Time hasn’t really been seeming to fly, but when I consider that my baby girl will be 3 months old soon, my head spins a bit.  Her entrance into this world, and our family, has been more seamless than any so far.  Usually my early newborn days are clouded by long, sleepless nights and an emotional rollercoaster that make feelings of normalcy hard to come by.  Not so, this time around.  I have been (mostly) even-keeled and last night, Ava slept from 10pm until 7am, woke to nurse, then went back to sleep until 11am…when I woke her up claiming that she’d been asleep long enough, but really just wanting to hold her for a while.

She has been such a blessing to our family.  The two things that almost everyone says upon seeing her are that she is so sweet (and I know, this is not unusual to say about a baby, but we hear it all.the.time and it’s what first comes to my mind when I look at her, so I don’t think it is as generic as it might seem), and that she looks like she belongs in our family…which is weird, because I don’t think my kids look alike, yet when I look at their baby pictures, I see Ava in each of them.  She belongs with us, and that makes me happy.

In her first days with us, as I prayed for her, and snuggled her and thought about who God had called her to be, the word that came to mind over and over again was “peacemaker”.  Not just bringing peace to circumstances and conflict, but bringing peace to tumultuous hearts and broken lives.  And so, I pray for God to work this out in her life – to use her to minister His peace to hurting souls .

She is such a gift and I cherish these fleeting early days of her life as God begins even now to shape her life for His glory.