To My Almost 8-Year-Old

Oh my Claire Bear.

Tomorrow you will be eight years old and that's not even reasonable, because you were only born yesterday and you have always been forty so for you to be eight doesn't make any sense at all. And it also is preposterous that you come up to my shoulder when you stand. But here you are, up at my shoulder and a night away from eight years old.

At eight years old you can jump rope like a champ (forward, backward, one foot, two feet) because one day you set your mind to become great at it and so you did. That's kind of how you work. You just set your mind to something, commit yourself 100%, and master it.

You continue to make moral judgments which seem way beyond your years. We were reading a book about Robin Hood which sparked a discussion on taxes and how rulers/governments can use tax money for good or can use it irresponsibly. You busted out with, "Our government must not use all that tax money for the good of the people. I mean, what do they do with that seven cents off every dollar???" You have such a seriousness about you, an intensity that I sometimes don't know what to do with but that I love and admire. It was placed in you by design and I am so excited to see how the Designer plans to use it for good in your life and for His glory.

For the first time in 8 years, I now have some freedom to go running even when your daddy is not home. You are more than willing to take care of your brother and sister while I run up and down and up and down and up and down the street right in front of our house. I pay you by the mile, so you are very motivated to keep the peace as long as possible as you make more money the longer I go.

While AK and Owen are content to play with magformers or little people for hours, you either want to be interacting with me or working toward a goal. Some of that may have to do with age, but I do think it's part of your personality too - to be goal-oriented or to be around people. You will play outside for an hour in order to be able to eat a pack of gummies. You will clean the whole house if you get paid a penny for every 10 items that you pick up and put away. Speaking of money, you now have saved up over a hundred dollars in your "piggy bank" which is really a shoe box. You are a saver, not a spender, for sure.

You are good at drawing, you have really nice pitch when you sing, and you are learning to play both piano and violin. You have a massive vocabulary and still love listening to stories, whether it's audio books or me reading aloud. You ended up having a great soccer season even though we signed you up without your blessing, and you told me that you were never going to smile or come inside of a building again when you found out. You stuck with it and, as we had silently predicted, by the end of the season you were not only becoming a really good soccer player, but you also were really starting to love it.

You listen to Adventures in Odyssey radio drama every day and love to tell me about all the latest happenings. You are great at relating facts and details but struggle to express your emotions sometimes. I sense that there is so much more going on under the surface than you allow to be seen. I feel that your heart is like "deep waters", and I oh how I pray for the understanding to draw it out. (Proverbs 20:5)

On nights when your Daddy is playing tennis or is at a meeting, you often stay up after the littles go to bed and sit with me on the couch to watch The Voice on television. I treasure those moments with you. And not just because you scratch my back the whole time so I won't tell you it's time to go to bed. But I do treasure that too.

You are strong, beautiful, tender, driven, and noble. You have a strong sense of right and wrong. You think before you act and you can read people (especially me) like a book. You are strong-willed and would probably make a pretty great trial lawyer. You are little and big, and different from anyone else I know. You are perfectly you.

Claire, I knew I loved you from before you were born, but the older you get, the more in awe I am at the Creator's handiwork in your life. Happy birthday, my sweet almost eight-year-old. Here's to another awesome year.