The Easy One

Today, our youngest child, Mikayla turned 17. She'll start her final year of high school in about 10 days. Kids come in different shapes, sizes, genders, personalities. If you have more than one child, you quickly realize that children from the same 2 parents can be very different but at the same time, you wonder how that is possible! Regardless, nothing is any more true than that with my four biological kids.

Mikayla has pretty much always been an easy kid for the most part, pretty self-sufficient, one who marches to the beat of her own drum, both figuratively and literally. She's a self-motivator, a non-complainer most of the time, a no-nonsense kid with her dad's dry sense of humor. She came into this world as the smallest, physically of my 4 biological kids but hit the ground running and hasn't slowed down since! At times, I wonder if she keeps us young or is adding to the "making us old" bit.

The neat thing about her as well as my other kids is that I not only love her (I kind of have to do that!) I also like her.

She's my only child to get a penny stuck in her throat when she was 3 years old, have to be taken to the ER by ambulance and into surgery to have it removed! She's my only one to be hospitalized for an intractable migraine last fall. Those 2 events probably added a few years to the "making me old" bit. She's also the only one to threaten to "tell daddy on me" when she wasn't happy with something that I had done when she was about 3 or 4. I told her bigger sister to tell her that that just wasn't how things worked. Even though there have been a few bumps in the road, for the most part, she has been an easy one.

She loves Audrey Hepburn, dinosaur stickers, the old TV show - Boy Meets World and playing the bass drum in her high school marching band. Her greatest love probably is reading. Even though her spare time is little now, if she has any, that's what you will find her doing.

Mikayla asked for a Bible for her birthday, an ESV Bible. Being a Christian as a young person in the world that we live in today is no easy thing. The world for the most part has forgotten about their Creator and that has definitely trickled down to the young folks. I'm thrilled that she is not ashamed of who she is, spiritually, but works to let her example speak about the One she serves both at school and at work. I am also thrilled to be her mom.

A VERY MERRY UNBIRTHDAY TO YOU..YES YOU!!!