Dear Marigold

You are nearly one year old! I cannot believe how quickly your first year has gone by. Time is moving so quickly it almost hurts and at the same time I love watching you learn and grow. You are sweet and joyful. You scrunch up your nose when you get excited or are trying to get us to laugh. You love your big sister and big brother and my goodness are they smitten with you! Whenever your Daddy enters a room your little feet cannot pitter patter fast enough to get to him. You have orange hair that looks like fire when you’re in the sunlight. I like to think that God really delighted in surprising us with your orange hair when we chose to name you Marigold when I was only 20 weeks pregnant with you.

My sweet girl, I didn’t think the world could get any crazier than when your brother was born. That was presumptuous of me. Sometimes I get scared; what kind of world will you grow up in? What sort of challenges will you have to face? Will your daddy and I have the time to train you in the way should go before you have to face what this world with devils filled will throw at you? I don’t have the answers to those questions. But I do know this: “Had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are, divine love would have put there,” (Charles Spurgeon). Marigold, we serve a loving and gracious God. We serve a God who works ALL THINGS together for our good and His glory.

The longer I live on this earth the more I realize that we simply cannot know what’s around the corner. Life can hit you in the face with death, cancer, depression, pandemics, and a whole host of other struggles and heartaches without warning. God tells us in His word that we WILL have trouble in this world. My dear girl, let the troubles and heartbreaks of this life untether you from this world. Let them drive you deeper into the steadfast and loving arms of Jesus. And take heart! Because Jesus has already overcome the world and we can look forward with certain hope to the world come.

And in the face of so much death and destruction there is also much beauty and joy that God has given to us in this life. I cannot wait to take you, God willing, to see the ocean one day; I long for you to be overwhelmed by its beauty and its vastness. Right now I’m staring out of our dining room window at a tree with bright yellow leaves that are so brilliant that it looks as if it’s been set on fire. Besides the beauty of God’s creation, He has given us a beautiful family with so much love. And He has surrounded us with an amazing community of believers. We’ve cherished both of these blessings more deeply since the death of your grandpa one short month ago. In recent days we’ve tasted the bitter and the sweet more potently than before.

No matter what this life throws at you I pray that God fills your heart with hopes and dreams and the tenacity to go after them. I hope you remember that every good and perfect gift is from above and that even the best and most beautiful gifts in this life are mere shadows of what’s to come in eternity with Jesus where there will be no need for lamp or sun because God himself will be the light of the world. More than anything, and I do mean anything, I pray that God would bring you to saving faith in Himself through Jesus. I pray that you would be rooted and built up in our faithful Savior and that you would be established in the faith.

I love you, baby girl. And Jesus loves you best.

Love,
Mama

5 thoughts on “Dear Marigold”

When I look back on the past year, it seems to have gone quickly up until a month ago, when my dad died. Right now, it seems like everything before that day is a distant memory, and everything after is all strangely happening “now.”

I can certainly understand why people treat their youngest child as if he/she were always a baby. She is walking around and jabbering, eating real food and growing teeth, and yet I still see her as the little newborn baby who needs to be swaddled. Anytime I lay her down her sleep-sack, I feel like I’m missing something; my Goldie certainly cannot fall asleep without being wrapped up. Marigold cannot possibly need shoes yet. Gogo cannot be beyond baby formula already! Can she actually be eating real meat? No, not my little Baby Girl.

The Lord certainly has a way of making us grow, doesn’t He? And not just physically. He has proven time and again that throughout all the pain, and death, that sin has wrought, that He is faithfully with us and will give us reprieve. Moments, days, weeks, and who knows, maybe even months, when He gives us the peace that is beyond all understanding. I think now, that is one of the countless reasons he gave us Marigold. And Samuel and Annabelle, of course, but our little Baby Girl Marigold in particular. I think God gave us Marigold to help comfort in this time of sorrow, and to be a shining, golden-red beacon of smiling light as I leave my office. Many times I am strangely tired when I come out of the office, and yet I still love running up to the kids, scooping them up, and squeezing them tight and kissing them all over.

I will wait with patience on the Lord for another year, doing my best to enjoy every moment. I know now that it will seem like a long time while we go through it, but that a year from now, as we recall the previous year, it will seem to have gone by in a snap. I love you, Gogo. And I love you, Brooke. Thank you for taking care of her and our other children so well, and for continually pointing them to Christ. As you reference from Psalm 22:6, we will do our best to raise up Marigold in the way she should go, trusting in the Lord that even when old she will not depart from it.

Beautiful, Brooke!

I love your posts; they are such an encouragement to us as we see how the Lord has people like the Averys raising up the next generation! May God be with you and James as you raise your children to serve Jesus.

Love, Susan