To my first-born,

Before I met you, I never knew that something so tiny could so profoundly change me. As you grew in my tummy, so did a love in my heart for a tiny wee being I had never met.

I knew that I was going to love you beyond words, but I didn’t realize at that point how much love I would experience.

I didn’t realize that giving birth to you would not only change me to my very core, but that I would never and could never go back to the person I was before. Becoming your mama gloriously wrecked me for the woman I used to be, and I wouldn't change it for the world.

I may have given birth to you, but that day was the birth of a new mother, too. In that moment, my heart softened in a new way and I got a deeper glimpse of God’s love for me.

Here you were, so full of need and not able to offer anything in return, yet I loved you anyway. It’s the strangest feeling, meeting someone in a day and loving them with your whole, entire being. You helped me to see how God sees me and how He thinks about me as His daughter.

I may have given birth to you, but you made me a mama. I am so thankful for you. My eyes have spilled over so many times when love for you has overwhelmed me.

You were an answer to a prayer I didn’t even know was on my heart. That’s how good God is–He desires to give us good things over and above and beyond what we can even imagine.

I always assumed I’d become a mother one day but when the day actually came, my heart was so bursting full that I just felt like my whole soul was overflowing.

I would sit there during the middle of the night feeds, in the still of the night, and would thank God for you. When you cried, I would answer you and I knew I was willing in a heartbeat to lay my life down for you. For you, this tiny creature that I barely knew. Yet somehow I knew you with my entire being.

To you, the little girl who made me a mama, I pray that I can raise you and grow you and nurture you and love you. I pray you will see God in our home, in our actions, in our interactions, in our love, in every aspect of our life. I pray that you will see a mama who will give everything she has for her family and then some, whose cup will be filled with the love of Christ and overflow to those around you.

I pray that through all my shortcomings, you will see me have a heart of humility, always.

I pray you will become a woman who overflows with love and grace. Though you were just a wee babe in my arms, I pray one day for you to be released to be the woman that God has called you to be.

And I pray, one day, that you will come to know the joy it is to become a mama to your own first-born, too.

By Sina at Her Mustard Faith