At
the wedding, I sang Good, Good Father with two friends who also love Elai. It took us
hours of practicing to master the time change in the middle of the song, and we
had to drop the key to match our alto voices. I realized, as I chose the song
and sang it, that what I wanted above all, as Elai was married, was for her to know
how much she was loved, and not just by me. I didn’t know what Robert would say
in his speech, but it was the same message. You’d think she would just know this by now, but this lesson is
never a permanent one. It gets erased when we sleep. Learning (choosing) to
love and be loved isn’t like learning to read. You can forget. You have to
re-learn—re-choose—every day, say and hear “I love you” every day. It’s a dance
that has to begin over and over again, a painting on water, a sculpture of
fire.
As Robert put it:
Having only one girl makes it easy to always say “RuthE is my
favourite daughter.” What makes it even easier is how much I love her. Ever
since we gave her the names of two close friends, half way through the
pregnancy, she has been special. Names do that – make us “knowable”, closer. I
had been using the female pronouns from the beginning of the pregnancy, not
wanting to be traditionally sexist, but when the ultrasound technician let it
slip that she really was a girl, we began to use her names, and falling in love
with her.
Elai, when you would still fit in the crook of my arm, and spent
many hours there since you wouldn’t calm down or go to sleep without that
movement, I loved you.
When you would run everywhere and climb everything and face the
unknown, still unaware of dangers, I loved you.
When your will began to develop and you resisted whatever path we
had laid out for you in order to make your own way, I loved you.
When we watched you go through the intricacies of making and
keeping friends, in three or more different cultures, and felt the joys and
pains that accompany that, I loved you.
When you came home from school mad at things it seemed the Apostle
Paul was saying, and when you wondered about how good God was, and then as you
took your own steps to find Him, I loved you.
When you pursued your
studies or art and other creative tendencies, and enjoyed your successes and
ached with your disappointments and setbacks, I loved you.
I have loved you through twenty one years, helping and watching
you grow and mature into the beautiful, courageous and resourceful woman you
now are. I know you will continue in this path, and that as hard as some of
life’s experiences will be that there will also always be more parts that make
it good and better. I will love you through it all.
But now is the time to let
another love you, and care for you, and provide for you, in even bigger and
better ways than I am able to. You are entering a whole new era of development
and maturing that has many special challenges and pitfalls, but so many more
possible joys and fulfillments. I will love you through them all.
Welcome, Mikael, to my daughter’s life, and our life. I pass on to
you this crucial role of being her closest male. Take her, even though she
never really was “mine,” and she will not be “yours,” either. We are both
blessed by having her in our lives, and charged with her care. You are now
“hers” and she is “yours”. You have our
complete blessing. We love you, and will grow into loving you even more.
Elai, this day marks a new life that you are only beginning to
imagine. You will have many joys, and
great blessings, and some challenges and difficulties. I want you to know, and
always remember, I love you. No matter what. Nothing will ever change that.
I love you.
No comments:
Post a Comment