Dear Abigail,
These days are all repetition and wonder for you. When you find a book you like, you don’t want me to read it to you once, you want me to read it to you five times in a row. The same words, same pictures, same cadence of my voice - close the book, open the book, do it again.
When you find a toy you like you play with it endlessly, turning it over and over in your hands like a magician who has just discovered the magic of an ordinary toy teacup.
When you like a song, you want to listen to it over and over and over. To your tiny ears, the familiar melodies don’t lose their magic with each repetition. It is music, your beloved music, every time.
Everything is new, even when it isn’t. Everything is exciting and lovely and worthy of endless reading, playing, and listening. It doesn’t get old to you. You just keep saying “do it again.”
Weeks ago, after holding you while you got excited about each car that drove past us in the chick Fil a parking lot, your dad shared a quote with me from a book he’d been reading by Chesterton:
But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun.; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic monotony that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
You are teaching me every repetitive day about the Lord - how to enjoy his creation, how to delight in ordinary things, how to say with the Father “do it again.”
With Love,
Mom
Photo by Jenna L. Richman Photography