And over the first few hours, days, and weeks that followed that moment,
I realized it was more than just looks that the two of them shared. During one of our nights in the hospital, I
had been watching Bryleigh as she slept so peacefully in my arms, and was
completely caught off guard when I looked over at her daddy laying in the
hospital windowsill-turned-daybed sleeping in EXACTLY the same way. (I wasn’t
quite used to all the similarities at this point!)
They look the same, they sleep the same, they even breathe the
same. Three weeks in to being home with
Brad and Little Brad, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. Bryleigh was doing some tummy time on our
chaise and I saw a mole on the outside bridge of her left foot. Noting it was NOT de ja vu, I immediately
knew I had seen this very same mole before, and it didn’t take too long to
remember exactly where I had seen it…on the outside bridge of her daddy’s left
foot! They have the exact same mole on
the exact same spot of their bodies. CRAZY.
Some people have apologized to me that she doesn’t look
anything like me, others have laughed with me at just how much she favors her
daddy, and the few that are bad at the whole “Who do you look like?” game have
told me they’re just not really sure who she looks like.
As Bryleigh continues to grow, she’s definitely starting to
change. One of my favorite changes is
that her hair is getting lighter. She
was born with LOTS of dark hair, a head full of it! But over the past eight months (8?!? How did
that happen???), her hair has started to lighten up, and when the light hits it
in certain ways, you can see the copper, auburn highlights that I’VE come to be
known for.
I had a moment of pride recently when I was talking with
Brad’s Grandma and she noticed this feature. She said something along the lines of, “Well
it looks like she’s getting her momma’s hair!”
So mark one up for the “Like Momma” traits. And while you’re there, you can go ahead and
check off the “sleep” category as well.
We are ALL thankful that she got her love for sleep from her momma. That baby girl could sleep through the night
at the early age of SEVEN weeks, and she‘s been known to choose naptime over mealtime!
I know that over time, her features will change and various parts of her will favor one of us over the other. I also know that as her personality develops and other traits that aren’t necessarily physical come to light, she’ll take a little bit of each of us.
As people come up and talk to Bryleigh, it‘s very common for
me to hear, “You sure do look like your daddy!”
Even perfect strangers have commented on how Miss B seems to favor one
of us over the other.
As Christians, isn’t that what we want. How incredible would it be for those we know,
or even better, a perfect stranger to walk up to us and say, “That, whatever
that was I just saw, I know I’ve seen that before. YOU must be a child of God.”
Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in His own image, in the
image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Wow.
Did you catch that? We were
created in HIS image…that means we have His attributes within us.
Beloved, YOU were created, as a child of God, with all the
loving, kindness, gentleness (and the list goes on and on) that make up our one
perfect Savior. We were created in HIS
image, so we are created with those same qualities within us.
Not every sweet new babe is born into the world looking and
acting just like one parent or another.
Sometimes it takes a little bit of time, and as they grow, those likenesses
tend to come out more and more. (And
sometimes it’s even day-to-day. One day,
I might have humor that stems from my mom, and the next day it might come from
my dad.)
I’ve got brown eyes like my daddy, and I’m left handed like
my mommy. Those are physical traits that
could be seen from a very young age, but there are other traits that we
couldn’t see until I was a little older.
I get my “math brain” from my algebra teaching father AND my 5th
grade math teaching mother. And as far
as personality goes, there are plenty of things that I get from each of them to
make the perfect blend of ME! (Although, I’m sure my brother would take credit
from some of my “good stuff”!)
It works the same way with our Heavenly Father and being
made in His image. There are traits that
can be seen very early on in our lives, but there are other things that tend to
come out more over time, as we grow in our relationship with Him. As our relationship matures with our Heavenly
Father, so do those characteristics that look like Him.
I recently asked my friends the question, “What attribute of
Christ’s do you want to embody?”
They each said different things, but it all stemmed from the
same place, they want to LOVE like He loves.
Christ forgives us over and over, no matter how bad we’ve messed up,
because of His love for us. Through His
love for us, He is faithful to us (which is related to the whole forgive and
forgive again thing). And His beautiful
grace. Oh His grace. As a part of His love for us, He shows us
grace in that He continually picks us back up and dusts us off each and every
time we fall short. And that's exactly how we are to love others as well, extending them the grace our Father gives us.
I want ALL of Him. I want every good and perfect part of Him that He has to offer, but there are some pieces I’d prefer to have in IV form dripping right in to my blood stream, those areas that are SO hard for me to live out from day to day (and that love I was referring to up there ^...it definitely tops the list...as can be seen over the past 63 days of my prayer journal). The patience with my husband or my child that doesn’t always come naturally. The loving reaction to someone that has seriously hurt my feelings. The humility needed when I feel I’ve done so much for someone, only to receive nothing in return. (I could go on, but I think you get the picture.) As one of the other ladies mentioned when I posed the question, she would like His peace. An IV of His peace going straight to my heart? Yeah, that would be wonderful. (“I mean, was Jesus ever nervous? Nope!” – Michelle M.)
There are areas in my life that I prefer to refer to as
“Work in Progress” areas, and it is these areas that I wish for audible,
tangible proclamations from the Lord before I cross over the line…I’d be happy
with a text message! A nice little, “Hey
Carrie…how about you take about 15 seconds to think over that response to your
husband before you bark back that ‘command’ at him?” Or a, “Um, Carrie. Remember me?
The guy that died on the cross for every filthy sin you WOULD ever
commit? What’s wrong with forgiving your
sister of that one little misstep? Did
you ever stop to think about what she might be going through that caused her to
hurt your feelings in the first place?”
But as much as I would love an IV drip of His love or an
instantaneous text message as I’m about to royally mess up, I have to remember
that as a Child of God…I’ve already got it!!
Because I am His, I have His spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) and 1 Corinthians 2:16 even tells us that we have THE MIND of Christ! As Beth Moore said, “Beloved, fathom the miracle of it. We are finite beings of frail human flesh occupied by the Spirit of the supernatural, all-powerful, all-present, all-knowing Godhead.”
When I feel bitter, I have His joy. When hatefulness seems to just fly out of my
mouth (or build up in my heart), I have His kindness. When I feel like giving up, I have His
strength. I was made in the image of
God, and I hope that as I continue to grow in my relationship with Him, people
will come up to me and say, “You sure do look like your Daddy.”
Greater is the One living inside me than he who is living in the world.
How do you hope to look more like your Daddy today?
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