The Green Hat {A Love Letter to My Girl}

Today, I am sharing a piece I wrote and shared on this blog back in 2014. For those who have followed me in this public place and may not know, the beautiful girl these words were written for has left God’s good earth and is seeing things we have only yet imagined. Katherine Grace, our beautiful daughter passed away on January 9th, 2021. This certainly has made the longing for Heaven stronger within me now than ever before. I rediscovered this memory and poem-letter as we prepared our 20- year -old daughter Katherine’s memorial service-something I still find hard to believe is our reality at the moment. I know God gave me the wherewithall to write these words…words that are worth sharing have been gifts for my soul…like manna sustaining me on a long journey. I don’t really have words right now, but I am clinging to The One who is the Word to sustain me until I do. For now I give you the words given me a few years back. When I can, I want to write everything I can remember about this beaitiful girl we have loved. I want to keep remembering, and never forget…right now, everything is hard, and unreal, and life itself seems irrelevent. My heart longs for home…our hearts ache beyond words. As never before we know what it is to sit silently before the Lord, knowing He has the final word. May these words bring hope for your weary heart, wherever you are on your path. May you know the One who sustains all things always now and forever. Amen.

My Girl,
How I love you more than words can ever express.
How is it that in motherhood God has so captured
His own inexpressible love and squeezes it out in tears and hugs daily?
I can’t even grasp the depth of my love toward you and yet I know it is, indeed, finite.
It is limited, this love I have for you my sweet girl.
I have dipped my fingertip into the pool of inexhaustible love that never sleeps nor grows weary,
and I suspect I have felt a portion of it coursing through my veins, welling up in my heart at times.
Yet I do grow weary at times.
I want to apologize in advance for the mistakes I know I will make along this journey.
Have already made.
I wish I could be perfect for you.
The perfect mother I never had, that none of us have, can ever have.
It is impossible, my dear one.
Those are shoes that only One should ever fill.
I fear it is not even a good desire.
The fact is I do grow weary, am imperfect and will fail you.
Oh, I pray not.
But I know better.
I know that you in your youth have already spotted my weaknesses.
Some are glaring flaws that prowl like tigers.
Others are just my own buried wounds and scars forgotten,
but tender to the touch. Exposed in the heat of the moment.
I am after all being transformed and conformed. I don’t have all the answers.

Even still. I do have this one thing, a confidence in the One who knit you together in my womb.
This same One who promised to never leave, nor forsake me, though every other human possibly could.
I don’t have confidence in myself, I just have no place to get it from but Him.
I trust in this, that He promises to lead those who have young.
That if all else fails, you can count on this.
His love never fails.

If you turn from me,
harden your heart towards Him and
turn from all I have dreamed for you…
I will trust in His goodness.

Not my wonderful parenting, not my ability to give you the life I never had, not my excellent “mothering skills”, not the hope that you will do what I think you should.
I come to the table with empty hands. But with these hands I can pray, I can praise and seek Him who is seeking you and pursuing you before you even desire to return His love.

I am fully confident in the fact that this love that wells up within me as life itself is a down payment on the bigger transaction of grace taking place in the quietness of my soul.
I am bought with a price and my love for you is tapped
right into that bigger reservoir of eternal love.
Not wasted. Precious. Pure and Holy.

I want more than ever for you to feel beautiful because it is already true.
That He has created you, and I wish upon wish upon hope, that you would feel beautiful.
Because even He is beautiful.
It is His beauty that has transformed me to the woman of grace that I am continuing to become.
That you can become. How I remember the days you felt beautiful, in your innocence.
How you burst through the rooms of our home in dresses and tutus and scathing beauty. Unashamed. But age brings the knowledge of the unholy and the world competes for your allegiance.
It hurts my heart when you lean that way and I see you feeling less beautiful.
Because it is not true.
You are beautiful.
You are loved.
You are precious.
You were birthed in beauty, because
He created you- kissed your precious face right there in that hidden place.
Saw you swaddled in embryonic fluid and adored you right there fully.
Beautiful.
The memories of you already fill me to the brim.
A million snapshot moments, stream through my mind.

I remember our shopping day a few years back…and the momentary joy of a green hat.
You picked up the hat, adjusted it on your head and your smile filled the room.
You beamed with confidence. Beautiful.
We snapped a picture, moment in time. One moment. One hat.
Maybe you will forget that moment in time.
But I saw something in your eyes that I wish I could keep for you and give back to you for the times you feel your beauty abandons you.
You felt it, in that moment…beautiful.
But I have found my Green Hat.
The One who is Beauty itself.
The One who’s Beauty is without blemish and unfading.
And if I could just give it to you I would.
But, unlike the green hat on the clearance table we passed up that day…
eleven dollars of motherly regret.
Temporary beauty that fades in time.
His hat of grace is available when you are ready to put it on.
He will adorn you with imperishable beauty and
you will be secure in this fit.
You are precious in His sight.
Beautiful.
I love you, and you will always be my girl.

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. (NLT) Romans 8:38-39