Take your time, sweet girl…I am all ears <3

I have listened to this about fifteen times this morning. 

It is from Caroline and as her mom prompts her through leaving a voicemail…she keeps waiting for me to respond and Rachel has to remind her she is leaving a message…there are multiple pauses and the characteristic repetitions of words as she attempts to express her thoughts. 

At age three she is, like her brothers, extremely verbal (thanks to my genes, which they all seem to have embraced with gusto and never lack for conversation, God bless them) and her vocabulary far exceeds her age. 

As she grasps for the next words, she often gets stuck on the connecting ones and so the ‘and’s’ are like a needle stuck in the groove of an old vinyl. 

When she is talking to me in person, she never breaks eye contact as she says “and” over and over and over until the next word rises up out of her resources and she goes on. 

I typically know what she is going to say…where the string of conversation is headed….but I never jump in or prompt her. 

I just sit there with all the time in the world and marvel at the way her eyes have a darker ring around the iris and then these amazing shades of blue/green with flecks of gold.

I look at her little sweet skin and her wispy blonde hair and I wait to hear what she wants to tell me. 

I’m a grandma. 

As a mom I didn’t have the luxury of time like I do now. 

So I can sit and just wait and nod my head and not get nervous about how much longer it will take for her to say what’s on her mind. 

Did you know you have a Father who leans forward from His throne and does the same for you? 

As you stumble and stutter out your thoughts, He bends closer and looks at the way He made your eyes just so and how your hair that you cursed this morning because it never curls right is just the way He thought it should be. 

He already knows what you are going to say and why you are going to say it, but He’s all about relationship and quality time and so He listens as you work it out.

He doesn’t rush you as you sort through the thoughts the are flying around and you try to put them into words that are often just out of your grasp.

He waits. 

He hears.

He loves you.