Happy Birthday, Stephanie May {our little preemie}!

Our second baby girl: ultra-tiny and way early.

I love you – yes, I do!  A  bushel and peck and a hug around the neck.  For almost your entire life, from such a young, young age, you’ve been a songstress, a singer, a psalmist.  You were the choreographing, twirling, flowing-fabric, scarf-dancing music track of the family ~ just skipping down the happy hallways of life.  Everything got a little more colorful and a little more ebullient when you came along.

 

Yes, I cropped Stormie (the other half of the trend-setting www.MayDae.com.  It Is not her birthday!  *smile

You were born to 

Heavy-with-flowers lilac bushes, your sister learning to wear “slip-slops” when she came to see you for the first time at the hospital,  purple irises lining established streets in Kokomo, a little charcoal gray house and a month with which you’re joined by name.   You were more than 5 weeks early and may have arrived because of a crazy carnival ride and took your first post-hospital nap atop an old pulpit in the corner of the fellowship hall while I taught a VBS class.  You were like a china doll, I was afraid to make noise.  We sewed and created and worked hard to prepare your space, we wanted everything to be just right –  and in that tiny pink and lace bassinet, you looked like a miniature. 

The rainbowgirl

God heals.  He is the Healer.  That is the blazing-across-the-skymessage of your life, Steph.  And the adversary gets no points in the battle for our baby girl.  With God’s blessing-kiss on the love between your dad and me, with your big sister praying to have a little sister all her own – you were sent.  But you know the enemy, he always tries to stop a miracle at its birth.  You live in the ranks of Moses, Jesus, even, with spiritual war- decrees against their very lives: Stop the miracle before it can begin to change the course of everything…

But God, who is faithful, healed you wholly and fully.  Breath.  That is what He gave you.  Unlike others who never had to struggle for air, you, like Adam, had to have a supernatural miracle of the very Ruach, the breath of God {the actual very Spirit of the Living God} breathed in to you.

And so, though I now see the miraculous in every day and can look back at the faithfulness of the One who created me and all the times He was saving me from myself and certain disaster, you were the very first miracle I ever really knew I needed.  And in the quiet, dark night following your birth, when your life hung precariously in a balance I didn’t even comprehend, when they’d taken you to James Whitcomb Riley Hospital in Indianapolis and you were not in my arms – I cried out for your life, and the Faithful One heard me and graciously granted my petition.

And though so much could have gone wrong, there could have been so many problems, later, He, by the driving force of His very breath in you, instilled so much color, so much texture and pattern and creativity and gifting and vivaciousness and animation.  His very Spirit filled your lungs and your heart and soul and personality and every rainbow has symbolized you since.

You are Rainbow Bear.  Always have been.  And it was confirmed by the laying on of hands more than once.  There is so much there.  May you always know in all things that you were created to declare in the heavenlies that God keeps His promise.

Happy Birthday, Stephanie.  I put some words together so you will know how & why I celebrate your birth and your life!

Happy Birthday, sweetie-pie.  With love from your momma

8 thoughts on “Happy Birthday, Stephanie May {our little preemie}!

  1. Happy birthday, Stephers! What a thrill it was when you arrived, and though those first weeks were scary, it was such a [gasp] amazing thing that such a tiny little being crept in on us early! Who’s butt is soooo tiny that people (like your proud aunt) keep cute little doll-diapers for 29 years just to prove it? Yours was!!! :) I still look at it in amazement when I happen to go through my keepsake box. And now, you’ve brought other little hineys into the world. Your family is beautiful and we’re proud of you! Happy – happy day, Steph!

  2. Happy Birthday, Steph, my beautiful big sister! Because we are only 12 months and 3 weeks a part (Dad and mom, control yourselves!) we’ve gone through a lot together. I have a few words to prove my point….needles + water beds, vaseline + mirror, baby powder = sweet smelling clouds, His Eye is on the Sparrow, Mason & Drake, swing dancing + concrete = fall = ouch, Stephanie and Tredessa’s Secret Book of Flirting (oh yeah, remember that one?), BFI, splashing in puddles = school fights. Awww, good times…. I love you :)

  3. Happy Birthday to you, Stephanie. I am touched by the miracle of your birth, and I celebrate YOU beautiful girl.

  4. Wow, Jeanie, like always you have captured the essence of the creation of birth. I love you Stepher, you are a miracle of God and continue to be. Happy Birthday to my little Creamie I still remember holding your tiny hand in the incubator and praying for God’s intervention. And He did intervene and He was faithful to His Word that brought life out of potential disaster. Be blessed today on your birthday, I’m so thankful that you are mine…
    xxoo
    dad

  5. Awwwww, thanks so much Mom! This is very sweet:) And thanks to Aunt Tami, Dess, Aunt Dawn, and Dad! Love you all!

    Hahahaha – secret book of flirting?! hahaha:)

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