Then Comes Merrin

I didnt think that I really wanted to have kids. I guess that I did when I was little, but when I grea up all I thought that I wanted was to be a musician. For that sake, I didnt think I really wanted to get married either, but God often has other plans. I found out that I was pregnant with my Merrin on New Years Day of 2004. I COMPLETELY freaked out. To start, the previous night Kevin and I am the Millers ( miss you guys!!) had done a fiar share of sampling the local beers. OS I thought that I was going to have a baby with fetal alcohol poisoning. Then, there was the fact that I was a smoker, then there was my job, the fact that I had only been married SIX MONTHS and moslty the fact that I thought there was NO WAY that I would be able to raise a baby and not completely ruin theier lives. I sort of feel into the pregnancy in a way that I could not have predicted. I quite smoking, and I took good care of myself and I found myself becoming "motherly" with this baby that I would have never thought that I would. I thought that I was too self centered to be a mother. I thought that I was never going to know the right thing to say or do, and that I was going to always be messing up. But then August 19, 2004 with some of those fears, but not ALL of them calmed, I had Merrin.

I stumbled my way through the first few months as all new mothers do, but I thought...hey this is not so bad I can handle this. Did I do the wrong thing sometimes? Yup. Did she fall out of my bed? Yup. Did I not know that I needed to put her in a onesie in the winter? Yup. But I did pretty good. She grew!!! I must have been doing something right because she was rolling, then crawling the walking then talking. Guess what I learned? I am not really all that selfish. In fact, I am pretty selfless....giving up my body, my bed, my sleep, my showering alone, my chance to just do whatever I felt like. And guess what else....I kind of love it.

Merrin is kind. She is sweet, she is empathetic. She is a lover of nature...anyone who experienced FROGS Summer201 can testify to this...She is goofy, and silly and has a good sense of humor. She is sensitive, and cries when she feel that she is not good enough. She has a flair for the dramatic ( wonder where that came from...)

and loves to sing, dnace, write, read, make up stories and tell jokes. She cares about her family and loves to make people feel better. She cares about her friends and her community and the environment ( she is ALWAYS picking up things out of the road) She is like her mother...stubborn, thoguthful, loves to learnd and loves school, cares very much what people think and what kind of person she is. She has my sense of the arts and I love that we share that.

She is also like her father...loves to make people laugh, is driven, has a strong work ethic, cares very much for others and would do anything to help. She also looks just like him and they share a very special bond. They have a similar way about them.

She can test my patience, I would never deny that and there are times I think that she is intentially trying to drive me up the wall. But I am so glad that I decided I could do this mother thing after all. She has changed my life. Literallly. She forces me to be better, to challenge myself and NEVER do things the easy way. She also has an amazing and inspiring faith in God. She renews my own belief with her unquestioning way of trusting. She reads her Bible and tells me that she talks to God when she need help "calming herself down" She says that she feels Him talk to her and that it makes her feel "comfortable" and when she goes in the doors of our church, she says that she feels God with her. Amazing.

She's a pretty cool kid, if I do say so. She is not without her challenges, as I am sure you will read in future postings, but she is a good kid. She has taught me a whole lot more then I have taught her this last six years, and I don't know that she will ever truly know the gratitude I have for that. She gave me confidence when I had none, taught me what selfless really is and what it means to love without out any notions and conditions at all. That is what I suppose I was afraid of in the first place though. Loving something so much that you would literally take your heart out of your body and give it to them if they needed it. But that is an amazing thing. That is the kind of love that was shown to us by our amazing and almighty God. Selfless love, love without any conditions. That is what I am most grateful to Merrin for. For truly allowing me to know what that is and what that means. She is such a great kid.

and one more thing...turns out a few beers are not enough to cause fetal alcohol poisoning after all. phew.