On Your 9th Year

Dear Ashlyn,
You turned 9 yesterday. I asked you want you wanted to do for your birthday. In typical Ashlyn style, you had a full plan for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and pretty much every moment in between–decorations, diner, fresh toast, a visit to school for lunch, $.90 ice cream treats from the cafeteria, cheeseburgers and fries, candy apples and a golden snitch cake, and maybe a few gifts to open.

I’m sorta glad you kept me busy. Kept me from thinking too too much about the fact that you’re now 9 years old and keep getting bigger despite my demands that you stay small.

At the risk of you rolling your eyes at me a little, I’ve got one last gift for you.

Seems like you’ve been growing up a lot lately leading up to this birthday. You understand things more deeply. You care about things more deeply. And, I’ve seen you love more deeply.

I know you are dreaming about things like a trip to Disney World sometime in your ninth year of life. But, I’ve got another dream for you this year. I am dreaming of watching you grow in wisdom. As your body grows and your heart grows, I am praying you grow in wisdom so that you know how to best honor your body and your heart in a way that pleases the One who made them in the first place. I want you to grow strong–I know you already are doing just that. And, I want you to grow in mercy–and I see glimpses of that that make my heart soar. But, I want you to also learn wisdom to know when to give of yourself and when to guard yourself.

Wisdom isn’t an easy thing to learn. Reading every single book on that new Kindle of yours can teach you a lot, but wisdom isn’t one of them. The only way to start learning wisdom is know who God is and who you are–His daughter, the daughter of the King. As you are sitting at your desk working on some project and as you are laying in bed at night reading, I want you to think about what that might mean. And, when things aren’t so quiet, when you are at recess at school or playing outside with your brothers and sister, I want you to remember what you are learning. And, you may just start to notice the fruit of wisdom growing on those branches, dear Ashlyn, my tree planted by the water.

It’s a big year–your last one as a single digit. So, if you think I’m all wordy and giving you too much to think about now, you just wait until next year. Surely, two digits means at least twice the amount of words from your mama.