“Tell me again!” she says. Stories of when her father and I met. Tales of her birth and how we cried happy tears when they told us she was a girl. (And the doctor and midwife laughed because in the brief look I got of her, I thought she was a boy!) The recurring reassurances that I don’t prefer boys, despite the fact that her life seems to be overflowing with them.

This girl of mine is full of stories. She tells a good tall tale, makes up a mean excuse and has been known to lie in defense of her strong sense of justice. Click To Tweet

She creates her own comics and will tell you every part of their back story. Just don’t ask her to write it down. I see in her the artist that is her father and the writer in us both. She carries in her the DNA of musicians, painters, writers, engineers and metal workers.

I don’t yet know which one of those, if any, she will be. But I will fill her full of all my stories and strain my tired ears to listen to hers. I won’t leave out the part about how she was loved so much that she was ransomed and redeemed. I’ll use the big words she doesn’t understand yet and try to explain them in a way she can comprehend. The greatest story and yet the one hardest to believe. I hope she will take it in and build her life around it.

As I close my eyes at night I continue to wonder at how much I still have to learn and how little of it I understand.

My mind whispers, tell me again. Tell me more about your love. Tell me again about how you chose me before the foundations of the world. Click To Tweet

Then I try ever so hard to listen as my heart takes notes.