My daughter, flower of the garden

December 14, 2021

Today is the birthday of my firstborn: my only daughter, Emily. May God shape and guide these thoughts and words I set down for her to read.

When Emily was conceived, it was through an act of love, and she was very wanted.  My husband and I were very poor, and lacked familial support, but she was from the very Zinc-spark Holy Spirit start a divine child of the Most High God, who calls from within her heart and motivates the depths of her work helping others as a doula, as a wife and mother to her two children, and to my son Max and his daughter, my oldest granddaughter who he named after you, his only sister.

Pregnant with Emily (who I had planned to name Ravenna Marie, after the art capital of Italy and my paternal grandmother, but when she was born she looked like a blonde-haired alabaster doll, and so I named her after my favorite poet, Emily Dickinson),  at five months gestation I had a waking dream vision of the world’s end, which I wrote down, and Emily saved for me, returning it to me with other artwork of mine she had saved from loss in 2012. Her father Jamie’s note and drawing “Wake me up when you get home” with what he called “God Rays” coming from a cloud are on this vision I documented at age 19, written on the back of my church’s Easter service bulletin.

Dear Emily,

What I want to say to my daughter, the flower of my garden is this:

I was myopic as a mother. My sight was restricted by sin caused my my demons. Granted, I was not as abusive or neglectful as my own mother was to me, but I failed to see the beauty and grandeur of who you are as THE FLOWER OF MY GARDEN, GOD’S GREAT GIFT TO THE WORLD, and His treasure and joy, for you are made in His Holy Image: we all are.

In 2019 I mounted these three painting that you did and I gaze at them every day:

Look at the beautiful illumination that you did for the letter “E” in the watercolor you painted for your middle school art portfolio:

Look at the iris and tulip and peony you painted. Flowers that I grew in the gardens at our homes. I grew and tended those flowers, but I was spiritually blinded to the magnificence of the flower that was in each of us. Therefore I shortchanged our relationship, hurt you, and drove a wedge between us which is capitalized on by what can only be described as evil forces who rule this world. I was caught in the webs of trauma, and had not yet woken up from that imprisonment,  captive to sin because I knew not Christ in me (even though all my artwork says otherwise).

Emily, please accept my love for you, which has no end. A wise man (Derek Prince) taught that Love is the Perfect Law of Liberty, and it is. Love breaks all chains and is boundless. It holds no grudges; it releases pain. It frees us, if we accept it, to transform into our heavenly LIGHT BODIES.

I pray, heart of my heart, my dear daughter Emily, that you accept my love, and have forgiveness for my acts of sin and omissions.  It is forgiveness which breaks the chains, and removes that bondage of all negativity. I want to be with you IN LOVE for ALL ETERNITY.

Happy Birthday, Emily,
I love you more than words can ever say.

Mom
December 14, 2021

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 

If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 

but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is LOVE…

First letter from Paul to the Corinthians, 13:1-13

 

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