Emma:: beautiful

Emma got off the bus today and threw down her backpack.

She also tossed her little frog ice pack.

She loves that icepack.

Something was wrong.

I've known this day would come.  It is partly why her first year home we literally cocooned her in love and made a sanctuary of our family and close friends.  We wanted her to have a foundation.  Have truth firmly planted in her lovely little heart and mind.

"Mom, I'm so mad," said without rancor as only Emma can when she is mad.

We agreed to talk in the car.  Thankfully.  It wasn't a small thing she had to share.

A boy on the bus told her he wouldn't sit with her.

This is hard.  It is harder because he wouldn't sit with her because he thought her hands were ugly.

Oh, and he didn't like her voice.

I have thought for two years about who we are going to be as a family.  What do we really and truly believe?  And how we really and truly know as head and heart knowledge that our Emma was fashioned fearfully {as in with awe}, wonderfully, perfectly and beautifully by her Heavenly Father.

No mistakes.

Nothing wrong.

She is truly perfect.

And she is truly beautiful.

She is a special gift, not a special need.

The truth is we all have special needs apart from seeing one another through God's eyes.  Wretched fallen man.

Tiger Mom stayed at bay, by the grace of the Lord.  I hugged my beautiful girl, told her how sad I was for that boy that he didn't know the truth, and reminded Emma of how lovely and incredibly beautiful she is, inside and out.  And by the grace of God, I also meant what I was saying.

Then we went to share about the encounter with the "bus monitor".  I told her that Emma had a sad story to share, and then Emma narrated the entire chain of events.  I have never loved a bus monitor more.  She said all the things I would have hoped she'd say, and at the end of the exchange Emma left with a little skip in her step, a smile on her gorgeous face and a "thanks for helping me!".

Oftentimes different makes us uncomfortable.  Which can make us feel a bit afraid of feeling uncomfortable.  And feeling that unsettled afraid leads to fear and judgement.  Mean comes out.

How many times and in how many places does this play out in my own life and home?  Plank.

But God.

Snuggling up on my lap for a long hug, some eye to eye truth about how God made her and how beautiful she is, and some siblings agreeing that indeed, she is a joy and a lovely, pretty girl eased my heart.  I believe they also healed a bit of my Emma's.

Then we prayed.  For that boy; that he would have the gift of his eyes being opened.  That He would experience God's love and grace in the places that truth can grow and lodge in his life.  He is, after all, a little boy.  We asked God to bless this boy, to take this hurtful incident and make much of it for the Kingdom, in this little guys life.

Tomorrow the bus monitor is speaking to the boy.  Please pray for her, that God would guide her words, thoughts and actions.  And please join me in praying for the little boy and my little girl.  My dear, sweet, beloved, beautiful, lovely, adorable, perfectly fashioned Emma Kate.  And a boy who is also a child of the King.

I knew this day would come.  I didn't expect to face it literally cocooned in peace and fully cushioned by the Lord.  He is good.  All the time.  All of it.

Psalm 139
¹³ For you created my inmost being;
   you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
   your works are wonderful,
   I know that full well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
   when I was made in the secret place,
   when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
   all the days ordained for me were written in your book
   before one of them came to be.
¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts,^[a] God!
   How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ Were I to count them,
   they would outnumber the grains of sand—
   when I awake, I am still with you.