Love Letters

For each of my children, I keep a journal.  I write little love letters to them, here and there, throughout the years, whenever it occurs to me to do so.  I write down the funny, cute things they say.  I write down their likes, dislikes, favorites, best friends, dreams, snippets of conversations, of their personality and spirit.  Sometimes I have gone a full year without writing in the journals; other times I have written four or five times in one month.  There are no rules.  Just a book full of letters.  Someday I will give them their journals, and pray that they mean as much to them as they mean to me.  

I first wrote in Isaac's journal in November of 1999.  Derek and I were married in August 1999, so I am actually surprised, looking back now, that I started his journal THREE MONTHS after the wedding?  Wow, I had forgotten how soon after our wedding I had started that.  Oh, and by the way, Isaac was born October 2002, years after that first entry.  Who says a love letter cannot be written to somebody before they exist?  Because I already knew that I loved him very much, even then.  


And so it was with great joy that I began to shop for a new journal recently.  Because I have so much I want to say to Gideon.  My son.  True, I don't know him yet.  I have never met this child.  I don't have cute sayings or cherished memories to record.  But I do have words of love.  And so I am filling the first pages of Gideon's new journal with love letters, in the hopes that someday, they may be precious to him.  A record of how very much he was loved, even before he knew that I existed.  

And I am eagerly awaiting the day that I will have my dear Gideon home with me, when I will have so many things to write about.  Just hoping I will have enough energy at the end of the day to pick up a pen!  

Who says a love letter cannot be written to somebody before they know you exist?  I already know that I love Gideon very much.  He is my son, and I am his mom, and this is a record of that love.