Little girls are so precious. God made them with all of the ingredients that make you fall in love the first time you see them. Skin so soft it feels like silk. Eyes that take one in, captivated by a little girl that touches the heart and causes it to never be the same again. All with just one look. Little girls grow up and many times become mothers and the cycle begins again. It is such a miracle to be born...to be a little girl...to be a mother. A dream that when it evolves in the natural way God intended it to the result is a joy beyond explanation. A little girl...so precious...such a miracle.

Children have within them a capacity for divine love and caring and forgiveness that adults many times lose in the process of growing up and enduring the pains that sometimes come from life experiences. I marvel at how children can just keep going on in the face of all of the distresses in life. It's a beautiful thing to watch the excitement in a child's eyes when they are entertained or treated to something special or anticipating a long awaited event. They seem to be born with a protective instinct that allows them to love and care and forgive without hesitation. And God said..."and a child shall lead them." We would do well to learn from our children while they are small...they have secrets of life that we should never lose.

When a child is ill or their feelings have been hurt or somehow they have managed to be hurt physically, a mother has this inborn instinct that she MUST fix everything and as quickly as possible. Most of us when we think of a child do not think of the unhappy child...somehow the two just don't seem to go together. And yet the world is full of unhappy, unloved, unprotected children and the only word that I can think of to describe how that makes me feel is...undeserved. A child should never be cold or hungry or abused or neglected in any way. We know that it happens...but it shouldn't. A child is a gift and precious in every way. Our only hope is in God to protect the children that all too often the system fails to protect and our only prayer should be for the children and their safety, happiness and health.

When you watch a child grow, at times it seems like it takes forever and other times it's as though you blinked and they are another year older. All of the firsts are so exciting to observe... first smile... first tooth... first rolling over by themselves... first crawl... first steps... first words... You want to remember it all because you know they won't. They will continue to grow and mature and with each step it takes them a little bit farther away from laying in your arms or laying in their bed. But that is what we really want. We want them to grow up and be who they want to be. Fortunately it takes a little while for them to accomplish all of that. It is such a long way to go from birth to adult. Wish it was easier.

Once I knew a little girl that was so loving and giving. She wanted nothing more than to please everyone and have everyone love her in return. As she grew up she learned that not everyone responds to that kind of love and caring and it hurt her very much. The way that she dealt with it was to become sneaky about her good deeds. There used to be a tradition on the first day of May to leave May baskets with flowers and maybe candy on someone's front porch, ring the doorbell and run away. This little girl loved doing this because she could love people and if they didn't love her back she didn't have to see it. It's sad to think that we sometimes have to be sneaky about the things that mean the most to us. But the one thing...the most important thing...that never happened to this little girl is that it never stopped her from loving and giving. She decided that it was worth it to love and give even if she wasn't loved back. And to this day one of her greatest joys is in giving to others.

Have you ever noticed how you can give a small child a task or chore to do and they are so happy to oblige? It's as though it's a game they are playing. What happens as they get older and you ask them to clean their room or pick up the mess that they made that the task has lost that game-like appeal? We all know adults that love their jobs and are happy to go to work and others that are the opposite. Is the secret in the child within all of us? There must be a point in a little child's life where they know what they want in life and as long as they have that, even a meaningless task just doesn't seem so bad. If we could somehow recapture that childlike feeling of making anything we are faced with like a game wouldn't life be better? There's nothing wrong with working hard...it's how we feel about the work that we do. When you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up most are very happy to tell you. They aren't concerned with what it takes to get there, or how long it takes to get there, just with what they want to BE.

Babies are a blessing in every way on every day. The beginnings of life are based on goodness and kindness and children are good and kind. It's the things that happen to them in life that change goodness and kindness to something else. Some of us are better equipped to handle the slings and arrows that come our way and thus we can hold on to goodness and kindness. Some of us simply can not. Never let it be forgotten that children are a blessing...a gift from above.