{"id":530,"date":"2012-02-20T19:56:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-20T19:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2012\/02\/the-gifts-they-want-to-give.html"},"modified":"2014-08-22T15:49:07","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T20:49:07","slug":"the-gifts-they-want-to-give","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2012\/02\/the-gifts-they-want-to-give.html","title":{"rendered":"The Gifts They Want to Give"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

When I was 22 and gave birth to my first child, I had very definite ideas about how I wanted to dress her, how her bedroom should look, and opinions about every minute detail of her life.\u00a0 She was my baby and there was a part of me which feared that sharing the decisions about what was purchased for her in some way diminished my role as her mother.<\/p>\n

15 years and 7 babies later, if I could go back in time and talk to my much younger self, I\u2019d want to say \u201cLet people give your children the gifts they want to give them. Let them dream fanciful thoughts for your babies.\u00a0 Share the joy of your babies with the people who love them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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#7 on Aunt K\u2019s quilt<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

When we discovered that #7 was a girl, I designed in my head the perfect bedding.\u00a0 I envisioned pink and funky, modern and bright.\u00a0 My husband\u2019s sweet Aunt K is a seamstress and offered to make anything my heart desired.\u00a0 I found the perfect fabric and sent it to her.\u00a0 A month later the bedding arrived in the mail.\u00a0 I was delighted with the beautiful things she had made.\u00a0 She was not.\u00a0 A few weeks later, she called and said she had made a different quilt for the baby.\u00a0 It was the quilt she had wanted to make all along.\u00a0 It took my breath away.\u00a0 It was even more lovely than I could have wished.\u00a0 It was a gift borne of her imagination, love and talent.\u00a0 It was quite simply a gift of herself.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>My mother-in-law offered to buy our sweet girl\u2019s Baptism gown.\u00a0 She told me to select it and she would write the check.\u00a0 How did I want to dress our girl on this most special day?\u00a0 I thought about it for a few days, and it was honestly too much for me to deal with in the midst of moving, homeschooling, pregnancy and life.\u00a0 Did she want to choose it?\u00a0 She is the mother of two sons who always wanted a girl.\u00a0 I told her to pick what she had dreamed of dressing her own daughter in some day.\u00a0 It was completely up to her.\u00a0 I asked for no details and gave no guidelines except length and color (white, of course!).\u00a0\u00a0 Last Friday, I was shown the culmination of the planning and love of both of my husband\u2019s parents for our tiny daughter.\u00a0 Crafted of white silk dupioni and embroidered with pearls, it was a dream of a dress.\u00a0 My in laws dream.\u00a0 It had the puff sleeves my father in law blushingly told me he would have dressed his own daughter in.\u00a0 The slip was made of the softest flannel because her skin is delicate and February is cold.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t want #7 to catch a chill in her fancy dress.\u00a0 The hem of her slip bears a Scripture verse her grandparents chose especially for her.\u00a0 Instead of a traditional blanket to wrap her in, they opted for a fantasy of a white cape, embroidered with her name and Baptism date and lined with the softest velvet imaginable.\u00a0 How tiny my thoughts were in comparison to their vision.\u00a0 They could have bought the gown I picked, but instead they wrapped her in a gift of themselves and beamed with pride as their girl became God\u2019s own.<\/p>\n

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The deacon from our old parish asked our opinions about the Baptism itself.\u00a0 I left it to him, and the Litany of Saints was filled with those whose names we bear as well as those he knows have special importance to our family.\u00a0 He spoke movingly of our family and found all the words we needed to hear when he wrote down what he wanted to say.<\/p>\n

Our beloved Oma offered to make a dinner for us.\u00a0 We had planned to simply go to a restaurant because we no longer live in Oklahoma City.\u00a0 She was adamant that no baby of hers was going to be Baptized without a party, so she gave our daughter the gift of a celebratory dinner.\u00a0 I had expected that we would arrive at her home for cake and punch, but found instead a spread of turkey and sides, a fantastic cake and a champagne toast to welcome #7 to our family.\u00a0\u00a0 It was a reflection of Oma\u2019s joy in the girl she loves.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve found as #7\u2019s mom that I can let go.\u00a0 I can step back and trust the people we love to make decisions for our children because they adore them, too.\u00a0 When I let our loved ones give the gifts they want to give instead of just the things we request, they far surpass my expectations. When I\u2019m in charge I ask for stuff and when they are they give the whole of themselves.\u00a0 How can anything I want ever be better than that?<\/p>\n

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When I was 22 and gave birth to my first child, I had very definite ideas about how I wanted to dress her, how her bedroom should look, and opinions about every minute detail of her life.\u00a0 She was my baby and there was a part of me which feared that sharing the decisions about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Gifts They Want to Give<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When I was 22 and gave birth to my first child, I had very definite ideas about how I wanted to dress her, how her bedroom should look, and opinions about\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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