Zoe, I have worried a long time that I would not be a good mother to a daughter.
I carry a blue suitcase stuffed full of the heavy memories I wish my own mom had done differently. And Sunday morning the lock on that suitcase breaks right open and explodes onto the bed in a riot of insecurity between the four different outfits I made you try on before Church.
My heart is pounding and I can feel it – the impending sense of letting you down. How many nights have I whispered into the deep blue of your eyes how beautiful I think you are? I say it now, at the beginning of things, so that your life will be colored with those words. So there will be no doubt in your mind that your mother thought you beautiful. I have held tight to those words like a seal I could put over your heart, before any boy could get there. Before any other words could find their way into the door of you – I wanted “beautiful” to be sealed up tight in the house of your heart.
I know firsthand the ways to splinter a daughter’s heart with that one word.
So I am panicked because today of all days old splinter scars throb as I try to choose clothes for you, my beautiful daughter. You need the right clothes because today I must put on Hannah’s shoes and walk into the house of God and give you back to Him.
I am terrified I will get it wrong.
I am terrified that here at the beginning of moments in your life that matter I will be at a loss to dress you on the outside with the beauty that lives on the inside. That I will fail this test of mothering a daughter. I am not the girl with fashion sense. I am the girl with the brothers and the dead mother and I don’t know how to do right by you when it comes to clothes.
Why should it matter? I hear myself asking as I toss the short sleeved gingham pink dress with the tiny cross stitch flowers aside. Why do I care so much that the white dress with the scalloped edges is too wide around your arms and the onesie underneath is the wrong color?
Who cares? Who cares? It’s just clothing!
But it’s not. It’s years of wondering how the popular girls blow dried their hair so effortlessly and managed to wear jeans that showed off all the right curves, while I drowned in sizes always too big, too awkward, too ordinary on my too thin and bony frame.
Whether or not people thought I was beautiful I rarely felt beautiful.
I am desperate to give you a better head start at the race against the world’s opinion of women. Your mother will be the one to cement the word “beauty” into the foundation of who you are so that come the teenage years, come acne and growth spurts, cliques and boys you will not doubt that your beauty is deeper than all of that.
My daughter. How has God trusted me with this great weight of responsibility? I am afraid I will fail Him and you on Sunday morning because I cannot seem to pick the right thing for you to wear.
We dedicate you.
We dedicate you back to Jesus.
And I stand in a row of people I love and who’ve known me since before I knew your father. And even though I chose right and the pale pink skirt that drapes all the way down to your pink Mary Janes is perfect, we sing the words that put everything we wear into the proper perspective:
What a wonderful maker
What a wonderful Savior
You made the world and saw that it was good.
He made you. He made you, so you are good. No matter what your mother does or doesn’t do. I stand with my arms so full of the weight of His goodness that they ache and there’s an imprint forming on my inner arm.
What a wonderful maker
What a wonderful Savior
You made the world and saw that it was good.
I hold a small world in my arms and I celebrate the God that made her and called her good. And in that moment I am at peace with being your mother and you being my daughter and I whisper to my mom, “Look, I have a girl. Look.” The eighteen years since she died wash away in the worship and I know she knows what I am feeling.
I have a daughter.
I have a daughter.
I will mother a girl child and it will be a wonder.
And right then, the words of the God who made all three of us come up on the screen and the world makes sense as the Father God whispers to us, His daughters,
And I hear it, the Zulu word that echoes from across the ocean and home.
We are beautiful.
{Thank you Natalie for the photos, they are a gift! You can see the rest of them over here on my Facebook page}
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The photo captures it. The sweetest face. The gentle fist. I am woman. I am pink. I am beautiful. Hear me roar.
I know your struggle. I was glad my firstborn was a boy. I didn’t think I could find the right way to mother a girl. But then she arrived. And 11 years later, we’re still figuring it out together. I am more, a better woman for having risen to the challenge. My third-born was also a boy, so it’s just she and I, figuring out together how to be women.
*This* post goes in my Gypsy Mama Fave File.
Every word here? I know them. But I also know whether we’re choosing schools or outfits, God gives us the grace we need when we need it.
Thank you for this post, my very beautiful friend. It is a gift! As are you.
Oh, this post touched me so deeply. Your Zoe is so sweet and pink and especially beautiful!
I, too, am the girl with a brother and a dead mother. And with two young daughters to dress and two extra heads of hair to fix every morning! But mothering girl-children is a wonder, just as you say. My oldest daughter arrived 10 years after my mother’s death; she is now 8 years old and reminds us so much of her grandmother. Having these girl relationships in my family again has been healing and comforting. These two are God’s exceptionally wonderful and good gifts entrusted to my care. How I love them and thank God for them every day.
Thank you for this exceptional post! I pray that you and Zoe both rest secure in knowing the King is enthralled with your beauty (Psalm 45).
Diana
Oh.My.Goodness. Lisa-Jo, as I was typing my own very painful post for tonight, I saw your name flash in my inbox and switched over to read this absolutely miraculous writing. You have nailed so many important things with these words. Thank you, thank you in more ways than I can count. I have linked to your post during the last couple of paragraphs of mine – a post which went in a direction I did not expect…but there it is. God is like that sometimes! http://drgtjustwondering.blogspot.com/2011/06/down-garden-path.html
Beautifulest of beautifuls, sweet Lisa-Jo. My mama-heart is feeling your doubts & fears & insecurities….and rejoicing with you too, in the slow-knowing of the true beauty we daughters possess!
I lost my mother and two weeks after she died I discovered I was pregnant and I KNEW I was going to have a girl. I did, a beautiful Gift. I spent my life in a constant attempt to dress to gain my oh so stylish mother’s nod of approval. She was STUNNING and classy and her common refrain on giving me the once over was ‘But you have so many nice things…’ Now my three year old Gift puts on socks that CLASH with her dress, leggings that DO NOT GO – she looks like a riot of colour and imagination and I LOVE it. I swore I would never tell her what to wear. I think that’s the key!
Wishing you God’s richest blessing as you mother your daughter and your sons. May you know that you are all the mother they need.
Bless you
Miz Melly
I cried reading this. Because I have such similar fears of raising a daughter. I don’t want to let her down, or Him. Though I’m not yet a mother to a daughter, I feel God preparing me to be one and working to dissolve those fears I hold so close to my heart. Even if I never do welcome home that little girl and raise her up, it’s still for purpose that He prepares my heart for the role. For me, it’s a healing process and I’m so grateful.
Lisa-Jo -
This is beautiful. You already know the words for daughters – how to seal up words of encouragement and love in her heart – because you do it here, in this space, for so many women who are also daughters. And I remember sitting around a table in November talking about names, and Zoe is the one you chose because it is the name for life, for the gift of life that God gives us. You are already know the words for us, and I promise you that the journey of raising your beautiful little one will be full of Zoe – full of life.
Love,
Hilary
i love this. i have a girl. and i have the same desires. i want her to know beauty and feel beautiful because we have put it in her heart. i want her to know love because we have covered her with it. i carry the same burden as you. it’s a heavy one. thanks for sharing your heart sweet mama!
How has God trusted me with this great weight of responsibility? – my older is 15 and i STILL have this question. it is awesome. i love your post and your mother’s heart.
These are the words that touched me the most:
And I hear it, the Zulu word that echoes from across the ocean and home.
Sibahle.
We are beautiful.
Thank you for sharing….. for sharing the beauty that is you!!
P.S. Have a wonderful trip “home”. My daughter spent three amazing weeks in Botswana…. and I thought of you. Blessings!
Oh, I can so relate to this, Lisa-Jo. I have three young women to raise (not alone, thank goodness!) and sometimes I am paralyzed with fear that I’m doing it all wrong. I made a HUGE mistake last week–let words slip that should not have slipped, and I am regretting them still.
Yes, “beautiful” is a word we need to remember and practice. But forgiveness is a good word too. We need to practice it with our daughters, and we need to teach our daughters how to do it. Hopefully my girls will forgive all the times I let those unintended discouraging words slip out.
How do you make me cry, EVERY time?! (In a very good way). Thank you.
This, after the one written years before Zoe came to be, is the perfect answer to your fears from then. Love it! You are beautiful, and you will teach her that her beauty has nothing to do with what she’s wearing but who she is. And, that dress is perfect.
I am an only child and I’m also the mom of a baby girl. I feel the very same way as you but I will take your words and cherish them and live them. I was not a girlie girl either.
Lisa-Jo,
I, too, love your mother’s heart, and how very gently and openly discuss your deepest feelings. I, too, have a son and a daughter, and am always in equal measure excited and overwhelmed at the fact that God saw something in me–no, GAVE me something–that is not yet fully developed but with His grace will be…something that gifts me the blessing of being their mother. Reading your post, I got to this:
I have a daughter.
I have a daughter.
I will mother a girl child and it will be a wonder.
…and wanted to add this, for you… for me… for all of us mothers…
I will mother a girl child and it will be wonderful.
Love to you,
Jen
Gorgeous and searing and TRUE. Oh, yes. I have two girls and I am so keenly aware of not giving them their mother’s burdens to carry. They’ll have their own and I don’t need to load them down before they are out of the door of my house.
I share these same worries. My mother and I never really had a picture perfect relationship and I fear I will make some of her mistakes. I’m afraid that I will say the wrong thing, or not say enough. So as you are doing, I tell Lola every chance I get how beautiful she is, how smart she is, and how proud of her I am…before someone can come and try to convince her otherwise.
Beautiful post. Nothing like a good cry in the morning. Thanks for sharing.
You’ve gotten the tears flowing this morning, even as my own first girl kicks the inside of my belly. Thanks for sharing your heart as a mother, as one of many women who have followed in Hannah’s footsteps to say, “Lord, they’re yours.” Precious words from a beautiful mama, inside and out, about her lovely and oh-so-cutely adorned baby girl.
Wow, what a powerful story! Thanks for sharing your heart.
This was an amazing piece that spoke to my heart. I will never be a mother … never really had that desire. My relationship with my mother filled me with fear of repeating the cycle with my own child. It was not a horrible life … just one of passive agressiveness and emotions that seemed to be out of control because of me. I never understood why I would want to bring a child into the world that might feel the way I feel … so I chose not to.
As I read your words I felt your fear … your insecurity. It is a hefty responsibility to raise a daughter. Your realization of how mean the world can be to a girl is a sad reality. My suggestion … fill her heart with God’s words from Psalm 139. I never really read them … still have a difficult time accepting them. But a mother cannot go wrong in teaching her daughter that she is good, precious, and wonderful. She was created with a purpose … and on purpose … by a God that says she is fearfully and wonderfully made.
I will pray for you and Zoe … God has given you both a gift in each other.
I sit here with my own daughter, and the tears well up because I know too well the feelings of wanting to do something better than what was done in my life. The word beauty means something completely different for my own mother, and t-shirts and jeans never really got her approval. I’d rather not spend more than five minutes on hair or makeup, and I’m enjoying food for probably the first time in many years. Beautiful is a word that I’m relearning by God’s grace. And my daughter will always be beautiful to me.
Jeniffer
Ah friend… I know the raw cry in these words — the one longing to be a mama after His heart, to raise her up for Him. You write His beauty because you are His and Zoe utterly exquisite, mirror of all the women before — and your Mama. Your Mama.
I couldn’t love you any more… you loving so deep and so much like our Jesus (((you))).
Please kiss sweetest Zoe for me?
I feel at a loss for words whenever I read Ann’s. She says it all so perfectly. Just to say, Lisa-Jo, that you are beautiful in every way and it flows out into the words you write. Words that resonate in our hearts and bless in ways only the Spirit knows.
This is beautiful… I have a feeling if I get to raise a girl one day, I will have these same questions and worries. But that doesn’t keep me from hoping for the opportunity.
So beautiful a post, Lisa-Jo. What a heart you have, what a precious gift you have in your little Zoe. God will lead the way and you will mother her with his passionate heart and she will know without a doubt always, that she is loved. we ARE all beautiful in his sight!
Dear Lisa-Jo,
I have read this post 3 times and the Lord has spoken something different to me each time I’ve read it. So many other women commenting before me have said it all so beautifully, but no matter what, don’t stop sharing your heart with Zoe. As you share who you are, she will share who she is – you will model safety and beauty and grace and honesty as you share your heart with her. As American missionary David Brainerd once prayed, “Lord, let me make a difference for you utterly disproportionate to who I am.”
I have a suitcase like that…and a pretty pink daughter, too. I never wanted a daughter; I thought it would just be too hard. I thought it would turn me into my mother. Well, it certainly is hard, but instead of turning me into MY mother, my sweet girl has turned me into HER mother. Love this post, LJ.
Oh how I failed in the early years of my sweet baby girl’s life (she is now 17 –time FLIES) I didn’t see the important of speaking that word –that word that I believed her to be…and so many others –precious, beautiful, wonderful, princess, magnificent, amazing, gorgeous, smart, …
I have learned the importance…not sure how I missed but so glad I know now…
we went through quite a ‘bump in the road’ about a year ago and GOD spoke loudly and clearly and I realized how important those words were for her to hear and I say them loudly, often and without fail today! PRAISE GOD!
That song by Sidewalk Prophets –These are the Words I Would Say has been ‘my song to her’ It seemed to speak my heart to her. And many others since then!
What a gift that you know this NOW and you are speaking these words of life into her already! Praise the LORD! Loved this post!
I love this, Lisa-Jo (by the way, we affectionately refer to our sweet princess by the nickname Lexi Jo
and I can identify with so many of these feelings. I pray, so deeply pray, that God will give me the wisdom to raise my girl in the confidence that is found in Christ. Not worrying about the worlds expectations, but relishing in the joy of contentment in Him. Your little lady is beautiful!
I so feel this…why do you keep writing my heart here???
I love this. I have a two year old son and an almost 5 month old daughter. When I found out I was having a girl I was TERRIFIED. My greatest fear is that she will battle the same demons I have (and still do). I pray daily that God would protect her from that and that I can be the kind of mother who will tell her that she’s beautiful while also teaching her where her value truly lies.
Aww…thanks for such a touching post…and letting us once again peek into your heart. Vulnerability brings healing. And is definitely something I could use more of. So thank you for your example.
Lisa-Jo, This is beautiful. I have a boy (17), and girls (15 and 13). There’s so many things I try to do that my mom didn’t do, but none of us can come close to perfect. I felt God told me this morning to stop trying to control and fix everything. Leave it up to Him. We’re scared of the future because we picture it without considering God. Whether teens or toddlers, nothing happens as you expect. My daughter recently had a quinceanera, a celebration in the Mexican tradition in which a girl leaves behind her childhood to become a woman. Seriously, it’s like a wedding. Oh my gosh, I barely got through it. So emotional. I wrote my thoughts on my blog from Feb 24th and 28th. If you have time to read it, you might like: http://5minutesforthefrazzledmom.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2011-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2012-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=14
Thank you SO much for this, it is such a timely gift for me. It is 2:30am and I am up with heartburn just a few days away from the due date of my first daughter. I’m terrified. How can I mother a daughter?? Sometimes I feel defeated already. This post really helped put my heart at ease. I’ll mother a daughter just like I mother my son- by God’s grace and for His glory. Thank you!
Isaiah 40:11 “He tends his flock like a shepherd; He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; He gently leads those that have young.”
You cannot fail. You are His. And so is she.
Simply beautiful! Thank you for sharing your heart.
You took my breath away. I have no words as the tears stream down my face.
I have stumbled upon your blog at just the right moment. On just the right day. And it feels like I have just received a gift. The gift of you!
A daughter myself, who lost her mother way, way to early, a mother of two wonderful (now grown) daughters and now proud “in-law” mother to two wonderful young men…but still the boys I never had to me.
Oh, how I love life.
And oh, how I love reading about your life with such style and grace. I hang on every word and thank God that I have found you today.
I’ll be back my friend! Thank your for using your God given talents to move in the hearts of others!
What a beautiful, touching post! May Our Father continue to bless you and your beautiful baby girl.
I have just found your blog, and I love it!!! You know how to speak to a mother’s. Thank you for letting God speak through you:)
This post hits very near to my heart. Just six weeks ago I sat beside my mother’s bed and knew she was dying. Cancer had taken over her body and there was nothing more that could be done to heal her. The one thing she kept saying to me was how sad she was that she would not be able to attend my youngest daughter’s baptism, which we had set in June. I knew there was nothing I could do to ensure she made it to that date in June, but I could ensure she did get to attend this most cherished event. I got on the phone. I called our parish Priest and told him what was happening. I asked him to help make mom’s wish come true. Despite us being an hour and half away in a hospital he agreed. I went into planning mode. We called all of our family, we booked the chapel in the hospital and I set out on the task of finding my daughter something…anything…to wear for her Baptism the very next day. Six hours from my own home in a city I had moved away from over seven years earlier, I had no idea where to start. I went to the local super grocery store that I knew carried clothing. I vaguely remembered that I had seen a white dress at the same store at home a few days before. When I got there, I was disappointed in the dress. It wasn’t what I pictured….not what I had in mind for such an important moment in my daughters life. But it was all I had. I bought the $14 dollar dress and told myself it wasn’t what she looked like, all that matter was what we were doing for my mom. The next day, as I was dressing Chloe, the dress had started to grow on me a bit. I paired it with an adorable pair of light pink shoes that really made the outfit. It was when we walked into the chapel and I saw my mom, sitting in the trauma chair, as she was too weak for a regular wheel chair, dressed in the outfit she had wore to my wedding six years ago (my dad drove the hour and half home the night before to get it for her) that I knew there wouldn’t be a more special Baptism. Surrounded by our family I declared my mom my daughter’s Godmother. My mom clutched her rosary, one that had belonged to her father, and my little girl was mesmerized by it. She kept trying to get a hold of that red rosary. When the service was over my aunt wheeled my mom back to her room. She was too weak for much more. The next day when I went to visit her she motioned toward the picture hanging at the end of the hospital bed. It was of an ocean scene with rocks of a cliff. My mom, however, told me that every time she opened her eyes and looked at the photo she saw the images of the eyelet that was on Chloe’s Baptism dress. And when I looked, she was right…it was nearly identical. Apparently in not being able to pick the “perfect” dress, I had done just that. Three days later, as I sat beside her bed holding her hand, my mom passed away. I have no pictures of the Baptism. My camera ended up having no batteries and my dad’s camera had no memory card. I was devastated..but I think it was God’s way of preserving the beauty of the moment in my mind and heart…plus my mom really didn’t want any photos taken of her so sick. The night we buried my mom, I removed the red rosary from her urn and placed it my daughters hands. It’s her gift from her God Angel, her grandma who loved her more than words could ever say. I could not have asked for a more perfect Baptism for my daughter.