A Gift

Gift: a present, a sacrifice, anything given voluntarily.
James 1:17: Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father in the heavenly lights.

Brian and I were given a gift 5 years ago. It was a gift we did not deserve, yet had prayed a long time for. For me, it was a gift I had prayed 1/2 my life for! This gift was not one we could see before it was given to us, yet the second it was in our hands, we fell absolutley and completly in love with it. It was the BEST (minus our salvation) gift we had ever received. This gift was perfect, which James 1:17 tells us ALL of God's gifts will be that way. This gift left us speechless as we looked at it. This gift immediately brought Brian and I closer together as husband and wife. This gift, within one second, gave us a new level of responsiblity and accountability than we had ever experienced before. This gift was a Perfect 7 pounds and was the most beautiful gift we had ever laid eyes on. This precious gift my friends, was Hailee Scott Wright. Our daughter, God's perfect creation, with 10 tiny fingers and 10 tiny toes who had all major, vital organs functioning as they should, who had once started out as a compilation of thousands of cells, then formed by His delicate fingers, into a live, healthy baby girl, was now ours. Our gift...to love, to cherish, to nourish, to grow, to comfort, to encourage, to cheer for, to cry with, to clothe, to feed, to sleep with, to let go of in the appropriate moments, to teach, and to rear in a manner pleasing to the Lord. This gift has been an amazing gift over the last 5 years that each day holds something new for us. From the first smile in the morning to the last kiss at night, this gift, brings so much joy to our life. This gift has taught us how to play with more babies than we ever imagined, how to dress up in the most fancy clothes, to color and paint and scribble, to cook for endless hours, to sing, to read a hundred times over Brown Bear, Sleeping Beauty, Fancy Nancy, & I love You This Much, to watch endless hours of dancing and twirling and tapping, to leap for joy at a successful bike ride, to catch her 10,000 times in the pool as she jumps through the air, to fish, to play putt putt, to have tea parties, but most importantly, to be thankful for life, to memorize scripture to hide in our heart, and to see a teeny, tiny picture of the amount of LOVE God has for us! That's what her life is, a gift, given to us by our Heavenly Father, who we are not to take for granted. God thought we were special enough, responsible enough, patient enough, loving enough, smart enough, wise enough, to be her parents and gave us her life, a gift, 5 years ago on July 10, 2006. I pray her daddy and I never let a day go by without feeling the excitement, the joy, and the honor that we felt the day we met her for the 1st time. Its been an increddible 5 years with this gift that we call Hailee-bird!
Happy birthday sweet girl, we cant believe today you are 5 years old! What a special milestone!

Psalm 127:3: Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward.