dear eden

how can you love someone so much when you only just met them?

that is what i have been asking myself since you were first laid across my chest.  you had just been born and i had just seen you for the first time, and i already had this sense of being totally ruined for anything but loving you.  even now, after two and a half weeks, i don't know that much about you.  i mean, i know when you want to eat or when you are about to poop or when you just need to put yourself to sleep even though you are crying.

but i don't know anything yet about what you will be like as a child, what you will love, who you will want to be, what you will find funny, when you will walk, when you will run, how you will love.

i don't really know you that well...yet

and yet i am absolutely ruined and undone by your arrival.  like my life is over, and everything else just stops because loving you is more important.  being your mother is my new normal.

things that i once thought important, aren't.  

and all i want to do is love you every day of your life for a very long life.

you have done nothing, good or bad, to earn my affection or warrant my love.  i had to labor with great difficulty to get you.  i love you simply because you are mine, and God gave you to me.

and isn't that how Christ loves us, his church?  because we are his, because he labored (in the ultimate sense) for us, and because God gave us to him?

and now i am understanding God's love for his children in a whole new way.

i love you so much, and i only just met you.

and i can't wait to know you better.