13 weeks

Blossom is 13 weeks old and it's incredible how she's no longer a baby...I mean of course she is but that initial distant, dependent stage seemed to be over so quickly.

Johnson and Johnson have a sickly ad that says "when a baby is born so is a mother" and once I finished wretching I had to admit this is in many ways true. Although my maternal powers existed long before she did, thanks to experience of caring for younger siblings and a team of younger work colleagues who I seemed determined to mother!

But it is interesting how your frame of reference grows along with a child and also how you re-access your childhood. The other day I found myself singing to her,

Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so, little ones to him belong, they are weak but he is strong. Yes Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me the bible tells me so.

I wasn't really sure where it came from or how a knew it growing up in a largely non religious household. (Turns out it was my Mum, funny the hope "God bless" was also uttered every night as the bedroom door was closed, religious no, spiritual yes).

It reminded me of an amazing seminar I attended by Kenda Creasy Dean, author of The Godbearing Life. It was all about adolescence and how we form our identity and how people around us influence that. It was also looking at how we walk with teenagers through that to best help them find community, creed, hope and ultimately through these things faith. She started one of the sessions getting us to think about our experience of teen age and how we felt about ourselves, with all our insecurities, hopes, longings, fears and experimenting and she got us to sing that song from that place.

The power of that truth; that we are loved even in the midst of the shifting sands of our becoming was immense and is still with me ... I hope I can have the grace to share that gift with my little one, both when she is weak and strong.