Dear Daughter,

I’ve started and stopped this letter a half dozen times. Sleep deprivation is like a leaf blower blasting my words into chaotic circles, ruining any attempt at a neat pile of thoughts. But this afternoon I made a lovely cup of Columbian coffee and cradled you in the crook of my arm and the leaf blower calmed to a distant hum. 

I started to read but mostly I couldn’t stop looking at you. You’re beautiful to me—your tiny lips and full cheeks. The fist closed around my finger. Dreams occasionally tug on your mouth and it’s like you’re smiling at me. And although I’m too tired to spell the word sleep, I cling to this moment because I know it will pass all too soon. 

Just two weeks ago you were a thumping foot against my stomach and already you’re a snuggly body that smells of milk and this marvelous, indefinable quality that all the newly born seem to possess. Two years from now you’ll be a version of your older brother—spooning granola into your mouth and asking for another Clifford book. And ten years from now … twenty …

I don’t know exactly how to picture it, but I have some ideas because I was a girl before you. I remember well the years of carefree, book-devouring, woods-exploring childhood and the subsequent years of insecurities. The days of falling in love and tackling school and starting my career.

 I wonder if you’ll share my same shortcomings and uncertainties. If you’ll have to grow up before your time. I worry what some snot-nosed kid in kindergarten will say to you that will forever inform your perception of self. (I could go back to my elementary music room and point to the exact spot where someone called me Horse Teeth. The audacity!) 

I worry that some undeserving boy will break your heart or that you’ll compare the shape of your nose to an irrelevant movie star. I fear you might measure your intelligence against your brother’s. I worry and I wonder, knowing that I can’t shield you forever. 

I just want you to remember: you’re beautiful to me. 

Long before I held you in my arms, I dreamed of you. I thought about you. I prayed for you. When I was eighteen years old, I told your daddy that I wanted a little girl named Laura. That’s how long you’ve existed in my heart if not on a birth certificate. 

Sometimes it seemed as if I could hear you coming like one hears a far-off train. Maybe, maybe, someday. God, who exists outside of time, knew you like a certainty whereas I believed in possibility. Isn’t that a beautiful thought? To grasp that your life was a known certainty, not a stroke of luck.  

Like Pastor Timothy Keller wrote, “To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything.” 

Knowing deep-down that you’re loved is the greatest, strongest tool in your toolbox, Laura. It gives you the courage to face the worst days. It gives you peace when you make mistakes—whether on math tests or in relationships. It gives you confidence when you experience rejection. Hope when you feel inexplicably sad or lonely.  

Knowing that you’re irrevocably loved is the secret of self-confidence. Too many people let this knowledge rust at the bottom of their toolbox, forgotten beneath tools spent on self-sufficiency, independence, and success. To forget that you are loved is to forget your value.

The other secret is this—the more you love others, the stronger this tool becomes. The more you love God and other people, the more you’ll learn to love yourself. Because loving others is becoming more like Christ, and that’s the truest version of self. It’s who you were created to become. 

Your true self is free to accept your innate quirks and idiosyncrasies. The worth of a true self is undiminished by a disappointing test score or an unflattering haircut. It’s untouchable. 

I love you. God loves you. And although I am just beginning to know you, he knows you perfectly. The Creator knows his clay. So no matter what you face or what others’ say or what the mirror indicates, just remember—You’re beautiful to me.

The sun is setting now and you slept through a long walk at the park and dinner. Soon it’ll be time for the house to sleep, and exactly when my eyes close is when yours will open. But I don’t mind. Not really. Because time is a fleeting gift and I want to treasure every moment I spend with you.

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” -Ephesian 5:1-2