I have a daughter

If I had told you that with my actual voice (as opposed to my written one), there's a 97% chance that's as far as I'd get. I'd either get too choked up to finish and just look at you with tears in my eyes, hoping you'd fill in the rest, or actually start crying mid-sentence and try to finish but you'd still have to figure out the rest.

So, to keep this blog authentic, I'll leave it there for now.

I won't leave you with nothing, though. As part of God's amazing gift of the entire story of Ayla, He brought me two blogs I don't usually read with words to get me through the labor and delivery process and shape the way I raise my girl.

Ann Voskamp is the new "who I want to be when I grow up." Here's a portion of her blog posted Monday:

“Remember?” I whisper it gentle. “You’re a bag of sand and there’s a hole in your toe — and the sand just keeps trickling out. Just let everything that comes on, trickle on through. Don’t hold on… Just breathe and let go.” All the torn places in a life show us to how let go.

And the work of birthing a child is the work of raising a child –  knowing how to let go. We breathe slow together, letting what He gives in this moment fill us, run through us, move on out into the world.

I don’t know how many times a day I still midwife myself and these children, “Just take a deep breath… Breathe.“ The beautiful labor over a child never ends. Our every breath is a murmuring of His name, YWHW.

These words couldn't have been more timely or more essential for me getting through the hours of labor, both naturally and medically induced.

Then, on Wednesday, shortly after I gave birth to a daughter who, by overwhelming popular opinion including my own, looks just like me, my friend Emily posted the link to this blog from titled Own Your Beauty: When Your Girl Looks Like You:

I know that she's a girl, and oh, girls are so good at being so hard on themselves. I want her to be really, really bad at that. I want her to always see what I do when I look at her. I want her to keep peering into the mirror with satisfaction, saying in the sweetest voice you've ever heard- "I look so pretty," and believing it. Not just when she looks at herself in certain light either, at a certain angle, when her hair is having a particularly amazing day. 

Although those days are nice.

I've read it at least 20 times and still can't get through it without tearing up. I'm sure you'll hear more from me about this, or I will say something like, "You know that blog I linked to about having a daughter that looks like me? Yeah, I'm working on that."

Finally, because I'm feeling very mushy gushy right now, here's a sweet pic of my angel to close out your Sunday.