My monkey

Yesterday was Krista's youngest daughter's birthday. She turned 4!! It is hard to believe how much she has grown up in the last year. I stole her and her 5 yr old sister after lunch today and we have spent the afternoon eating pizza, taking naps, and now they are making a mess painting at my table...and having an absolute blast:) They are growing up into such pretty young ladies. I of course do not have favorite children. There are 8 about to be 9 very special children in my life. Of course my nephew Ryan is one, Krista's 6 and then her brother's newborn little girl, Lexi. My friend Tracy is expecting a little boy named Ben in just a few months. These kids bring such joy to my life. Since it is Brityn's birthday I am going to just write about her.. so no hurt feelings from any of you mom's out there..lol. I remember like it was yesterday when Brit Brit was born. It had been a long almost 9 months. Kris was bedridden for a lot of it and oh was that an experience. I am just glad that Brityn is the last:) There had been many false alarms but one evening while at Bible study with some high school girls I was teaching Jared called. After the lesson I listened to my voicemail...it was Jared informing that my newest "niece" had arrived and that I had better get up to the hospital.


Oh she was soooo beautiful!!! A true miracle. How can you look at a newborn and not see God's hand written all over their face? Up to this point in my life I had never been extremely close to anyone who had a baby (my nephew wasn't born till the next year). I had been apart of the Pavatt family for about a year and a half by this point. I spent most of my free time between classes hanging out there and often spent weekends babysitting the 3 kids that were around at that point (now there are 6, two recently adopted). When I held that little girl for the first time I was amazed at just how much love I felt. Since then Brityn and I have been very close. She is very dear to my heart. She is the baby and spoiled to the core. She has been held and rocked and sung to sleep since she was born. She has all of us college/young couples/early career people or whatever you want to call the big group of 18-35 yrs old that hang out on Sundays at the Pavatt house, completely wrapped multiple times around her fingers.

(Okay.... I have to stop now and head over to start dinner at the Pavatts, so I'll have to finish this up later)

Tonight was bitter sweet.... Everyone showed up plus a new couple. There haven't been many new people here recently, I wonder what God is going to do next with our group...something crazy... I can just feel it.

Back to my sweet Brityn or as we often call her, monkey. So she is just about as rotten as a child can be but oh is she ever a sweetie. She loves to be held. She often looks up at me and says, "Kaffer hold you," and of course I almost aways do:) One of my favorite things about her is the way God uses her to make me feel so special. All the kids are very affectionate and give great hugs and kisses and say I love you all the time. Brityn does too... but she does it very differently. Sometimes she and I will be back in her room playing whatever and she will just stop, look up and say, "kaffer, I love you." Sometimes when I am holding her she looks me in the eyes, grabs my face with her hands and says, "Kaffer, I love you." Other times she will just simple remind me that I am her Kaffer. (Kaffer is the name that was given to me by Kailyn, now 8, when she was 2 and could not pronounce Kathryn). I don't think that a day has gone by spent with her where she didn't say at least one of those phrases to me.



I am amazed at the way God works. We read in church today from 1 Peter and the verse that says to cast all your cares on Him, for He cares for us. Do you get that last part. We don't cast our cares on Him just because He is strong enough to bear the weight. He wants us to because He actually cares...about me. Those things that I think are just stupid.... God cares about. Those worries I have about my future... God cares about. I really don't like this feeling of loneliness that has crept in my life here lately. I often drive up my driveway and sigh...another night of coming home to an empty house. All of my friends, but one, are married. One has 6 kids, one is expecting and the other married for almost a year now. I often wonder and ask God... when is it going to be my turn??

I was having one of those hard, lonely nights tonight. So I'm getting ready for bed...feeling sorry for myself and trying to have my own pity party and I look on my nightstand and see evidence of two sweet little girls all around my house... and I just smiled. Then I opened my computer to this page. I sat down to finish this post and as I began writing about my sweet little monkey the tears just started flowing. God cares about that loneliness inside of me. He may not be ready to fulfill that need the way I think He should but He so in His own way. I hear His voice in the form of a little one whispering I love you Kaffer as I tuck her in and sing to her. God uses a small little girl to remind me that I am special, that there is a reason why I am where I am. Yeah maybe I come every night to an empty house but God is here. He doesn't think that this struggle that I am having is silly. Tonight will not let the enemy win. Maybe I'm not where I think I should be at 24, but I am right where God wants me to be. So the plans I have/had for my life are a little different then what is actually taking place, but God is preparing me for something amazing. So tonight, I am casting my loneliness on Him, because He cares about me. I am also throwing away my plans, His are far better, even if they don't make any sense right now. I am going to choose right now to trust in Him. Completely trust in Him. I can hold my head up high, Satan has no foothold in this life. My Father loves me and is here with me. He is all I need, more than I could ever want, and I'm going to rest in His faithfulness.