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| In my classroom on Valentine's Day! :) |
Baby Girl is the size of a large mango!
Hola mi chiquita linda,
How are you doing in there today? Right now your daddy is out hiking Flat Top Mountain. I have to admit that I'm a little bit jealous, and feel kinda like a wuss being stuck at home on this gorgeous day, but instead I get to write this letter to YOU!
So the theme of this week has been love, love, love, love, loooooooooooove, and more love - that's what it's all about this week. I planned lots of Valentine's activities at school, we ate LOTS sugar, I got about a million and one cards and candies for both me and you, and had two Valentine's Day parties - one at school, one at home. We even named you Valentina at school for the day of our Valentine's party. (I hope you're okay with having a couple hundred different names before you're even born cause the kiddos are loving it! :)
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The kids wishing you a HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! (so they were a little excited... and very SUGARED up) Your dad spoiled me for Valentine's Day too...  |
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| Then I came home to a clean house, these flowers (daisies are my favorite), a new vase, American cereal (it's so expensive here that we never buy it but I've been eyeballing it for like... I was going to say my whole pregnancy, but really like 3 years?), and all this milk for you (I crave a LOT of milk lately... oh and don't worry, milk here doesn't have to be refrigerated in case you might be wondering :) |
Don't worry, you got spoiled this week too! My friend Karen brought you a TON of clothes from her baby Guliana and our friend Rachel who came to visit this week from Delaware brought you clothes and treats for us too (like Reese's Cereal, mmmmm)! I have already filled a whole second drawer for you now (I'll show you more photos soon!) You even got a Baby Calvin Klein shirt - we were worried about you looking like a poor missionary kid, but you are going to be stylin' girl!
In Bible class this week, we memorized the verse John 15:17, we decorated crafty hearts with 1 Corinthians 13 at our house V-day party, and studied Romans 12 at my women's Bible study (go look all these up when you can :). So yeah lots of LOVE, and it got me thinking of the things I want to share with you about LOVE.
My favorite quote on love is a simple one, and comes from the great Dawnette Gooding (who I'm sure you will know by the time you can read this, is no one famous, but one of your mom's first teaching friends and biggest life mentors). We used to spend late nights together in Owosso, lesson planning, eating dinner, and having heart-to-hearts on anything and everything about school and life. I will always remember her saying one night while we were deep in talk about love and relationships and marriage, "Kristin, love isn't a feeling, LOVE IS AN ACTION. It doesn't really have anything to do with how you feel, it's what you choose to get up and do every single day". Most of us think of love in illustrations of a dozen roses, big diamond rings, romantic engagement photos, and fairytale weddings. But these are not the things that keep a marraige going for 60 years like your great grandparents did, and what holds it together when everything else in the world is falling apart. More than half of those pretty pictures end in big fat ugly divorces. Like Dawnette said, it's about the ACTIONS that you take after all the glam and glittter fades and you're just left with each other. Which reminds me a story... (you probably know by now that your momma is a story teller :)
Once upon a time when your dad and I were newlyweds, we found super cheap tickets online to go to Puerto Rico and decided to take a second honeymoon, just cause. We booked our tickets and packed up backpacks, tents, sleeping bags, and bought a guidebook all in about 48 hours before jumping on the plane (we were young and fun and spontaneous like that). We took the crazy transportation system as far as we could, then hiked until we didn't think our feet could carry us further, then hitchhiked the rest of the way out to this campground in the middle of NOWHERE at a beach in Fajardo. We got there during a holiday so the campground was deserted and we had the whole place to ourselves. There was no sign of people or civilization for miles, and not even flush toilets - just us and the palm trees and Caribbean waters and our little tent. We found the primitiveness of it all utterly romantic. Until... I got sick. Like really REALLY felt like I would die and wanted to die, so weak I couldn't move, puking all down the front of myself, definitely worst ever of my life kinda sick. We think it was dengue fever, but never found out for sure. But all of a sudden being in the middle of nowhere with no real bathrooms, stores, clinics, or even transportation was not very fun or romantic at all. But your daddy showed me real love through all of it - I'm not even going to tell you all of the yucky details - but he cleaned up my puke, washed my clothes, and hiked who knows how far to the closest gas station to find me water, gatorade, toilet paper... stuff like that for 3 days until we could catch a ride out of there.... and he never made me feel any less than beautiful through any of it (even though I know I was lookin pretty darn scary). And I knew before then that your dad was a keeper, but I think I felt more loved during that time than the day he proposed, our wedding day, or through any other romantic thing he ever did. So you see, real love isn't always pretty... it's about action, sacrifice, and sometimes it's cleaning up someone's puke and still telling them they're beautiful. ;)
Which brings me to another story.... I love stories... but I think this is probably my favorite real life love story of all time. And it's tragic and heartbreaking and powerful and incredibly beautiful all at the same time. Last summer I was working with your Grandma Debbie for the summer (she's your "bonus" grandparent who I'll tell you all about soon :) who is an occupational therapist, and I got to meet and work with (and mostly have fun with) her clients. Most of them are accident victims and have incredible stories, but this one is my favorite. I'll tell you their names someday, because I'll never forget them, but since this is the internet I'm going to call them J and R. They were high school sweethearts, the sweetest kind, married young with two sweet young daughters, living a beautiful life til one day mom hit a patch of ice driving and everything in their worlds changed. Dad never left her side in the hospital for months, then proceeded to care for her every need as she had a traumatic brain injury, and he raised the two daughters. It makes me tear up now just thinking about them. I know this sounds like a good Nicholas Sparks movie, but this is real life stuff, and the gritty everyday details weren't always pretty or easy either - this man did the bathrooming, showering, feeding, I'm talking EVERYTHING for his wife... and this wasn't for a few weeks til she got better and everything went on happily ever after... we're talking years of it, lifelong sacrifices, all day everyday. All while immersing himself in research to find the best ways to care for and treat his wife. Talk about real love, commitment, and dedication like you've EVER never seen before. I always wondered - would I, could I, be strong enough to do this? I think this is what Dawnette meant when she said "Love is an action". I know it will be easy to get caught up in photos of love on facebook or pinterest or magazines or whatever it is for you by the time you're older, but I hope you look for these illustrations of love like J and R... parents caring for their children who are born with severe disabilities and medical conditions, elderly couples who care for each other through thick and thin, teachers, doctors, social workers, therapists, missionaries who go to endless boundaries to show love to those who need it most. This is where I want to you to look to learn about how to love others because this is where you will learn the most about how to really act in LOVE, and not just feel it.
And you know, sometimes you're going to fail at love. Sometimes it is really HARD. Sometimes you will fall flat on your face. Trust me that I do it all. the. time. I can't tell you how many times I've come home from work crying while your dad holds me and listens to me say "I just want to show _______ (student) unconditional love but instead I snapped at him and sent him to the office... what's wrong with me? I'm the worst teacher in the whole world". It happens, baby girl - to all of us. To the best of us. And we just have to pick ourselves up and keep trying.
Last thing, don't underestimate the power of loving JUST ONE person. If you're like your momma, you'll want to think BIG, but sometimes that one person is the only one God had in mind. This week your dad made heart shaped invitations to take to the women from the local brothels to invite them over for a Valentine's Day party at our house. At our Christmas party, we had 15 women come. But this time, only 2 women showed up (granted it was raining and Dominicans think they will melt in the rain, but my heart kinda sank when I only saw two walk up to our door)... I thought, what are we doing wrong? But after shaking it off and sharing my testimony with these women (and don't worry little girl, it was nothing about me being a prostitute in the past or anything like that, just about how God's love really has changed my life), one of these two women broke into tears and opened up about how she really wants to leave prostitution and shared all the broken paths that led her to it. And we connected. And it gave me hope for her. She said I've tried this and tried that and it didn't work, and I'm not educated and I can't read or write, so what other choice do I have? I can't imagine to be so desperate as she was. But I hope that we can help her. And I think all the planning and baking and crafting and invitations was all worth it for just that one woman.
I have more stories I could tell you (my head is full of them :), but I'll stop here and conclude with a few of my "love" themed favorites, just in case you'd like to know. Some of my favorite love songs:
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High Tide or Low Tide by Bob Marley... your dad did a spin-off on the lyrics for our wedding vows... I found them in his sketchbook last year, ripped them out, and they're still sitting on our dresser :) |
Your Auntie Katie sang this song for us at our wedding
Your dad and I choreographed an entire dance one night to the song "The Way You Do the Thing You Do" by UB40, just cause we're goofy like that
"All You Need Is Love" - just cause the Beatles are awesome and this is one my favorite songs EVER.
My favorite book about LOVE (there are a few but this is number one):
Promise me you'll read it someday.
And though I love all the 80's romance movies just cause they're fun, this is my favorite one of all. It isn't really a romance movie but I think the father in the story shows true love more than any other other love movie I've seen, which makes it my absolute favorite movie of all time:
Someday when you're older we will watch it together.
Okay baby girl, I could tell you lots more, but I'll have to save it for next week. I know I write a lot, there's just always so much that I want to tell you! I love you a lot, and one more thing that made me think of you this week:
(Photo credit: pinterest)
And remember... as much as I love you, and so does your dad, your grandparents, your aunties, uncles, and so many others, remember that God loves you SO much more than any of us ever could. Don't ever forget that.
Love you chica,
Love you chica,
Your momma
Oh and I have a P.S. Here's a couple more photos from when we took Santa and Jeffly to the river yesterday, since I don't know how well you can see my belly in the other one above, and just cause I wanted to show you.
See the kids hiding behind me - they are kids from the barrio around here who take baths in the river in their skivys or birthday suits, I can't help but love all their cute little naked butts. Don't worry, we won't bathe you in the river (it's kinda dirty), we'll use something much classier... like a bucket. ;)
Okay that's all - 17 more weeks til I get to meet you - can't wait!!
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