Security Objects

Ah, finally, a snow worthy of snow pants, snow boots, and snow shovels! We have about six inches of snow here on Eastern Long Island, with more continually falling. The kids have been enjoying this day immensely.

What an exciting week! My sister-in-law gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby boy yesterday afternoon. My husband went to visit her. We were really disappointed to find that the hospital would not admit children under the age of 14. So the children and I will have to wait to see the new little addition to our extended family. I finally got the new mom on the telephone this morning. “He’s perfect,” she said, in a tired but happy voice. Thanks to all of you who prayed! It just so happens that this was also my great-grandmother's birthday - a doubly special day!

I have one hundred Choose Life license plate tag holders on their way to my house. It will be my personal little mission to get these on the roads of New York this spring. (To order one for yourself, go to http://www.choose-life.org/)

The baby has been increasingly attached to her security objects over the past week. The number of things she needs to carry with her have with her have grown exponentially each day, so that there is barely enough room in my arms to carry her and everything else.

Number one is “night night”, her favorite white blanket. Then there is “mama”. That is what she has called baby dolls, since I first put one in her arms and made it say “mama” in a teeny little voice. Sometimes she also has to carry her second favorite doll, “mama” number two.

While nursing, she continually checks anxiously to make sure Night Night and Mama are still there. Why can’t she peacefully take her nourishment while snuggled into her mother, I wonder to myself.

I wonder if Our Heavenly Father looks down on us and wonders the same thing. He doesn’t want us to be anxious and worried about earthly things either. He wants us to fully partake in all the beauty he has given us, and leave our needs at his feet.

“Notice how the flowers grow. They do not toil or spin. But I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass in the field that grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith? As for you, do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not worry anymore. All the nations of the world seek for these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these other things will be given you besides. Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”
Luke 12:27-34

Above: An oil on canvas landscape by John Fabian Carlson, American artist, 1924