Happy Birthday, dear Julia!

She turns twelve today, my youngest. What a beautiful girl she is with a sweet, sensitive, caring heart. I'm privileged to be her mommy.

Her birthday is usually right around Father's Day, which brings an ache to me as a fatherless girl. I wrote about her birth, Father's Day, and my heart in a poem for Thin Places when she was turning nine. May it bless you all.

Two come by, year by year
At least for the last nine
When sometimes they collide
Birth shaking hands with Death,
Death not returning the favor

Father’s Day is never easy
for the fatherless
Half-orphaned, starved to the bone
For Daddy love
No man can fill

Thirty years is a terrible lifetime
to weave through days
without his hand
his words
his I love yous

Nine years ago, she yowled hello
to her Daddy
So alive, she bawled and bawled
He held her
I melted
Crumbled

I will not know
what my daughter
wears like a birthright
around her heart
Her daddy’s love

But I can taste it
I can see it
I can marvel
from the sidelines of parenthood

God’s father-heart knew
I needed resurrection
Julia’s life on my day of sorrow
Joy mingled with my gaping heart
united in her

Strange how life
Can’t be helped
Or hindered
Even when Death snatches
fathers away

Resurrection is always
The answer to grief
New life, new yowls, new hopes
Mingled with
the life that was,
old tears,
old cynicisms

Thank You kindly
for the juxtaposition,
Jesus of the resurrection,
the One who weeps on Father’s Day
Alongside me

Who pulled His beard
While the world ripped his flesh
And His father died to Him
in that terrible moment
history hinged upon

You understand resurrection
Invented it
Wove it into my life
on Father’s Day
when my daughter
Cried her way into my arms