Another kind of pearl

It is the million little things God does for me along the way that whisper of a love and tenderness too deep and precious for me to comprehend. Our friendship, this love between Creator and creation, is not a single moment of epiphany, but a long string of small pearls that I save and treasure. Woven on the strand of my ordinary days.

"Friendship isn't a big thing - it's a million little things."


I remember the day my aunt found the first tiny sharp edge, like a grain of rice, budding out of Katrina's gums. It is a visceral memory, one of those that wrenches you to the delightful yet jarring realization that your baby won't stay a baby for very long. For a week now, that very same tooth has been wiggled and waggled. I prayed all week that it would fall out before I leave for my scan. It is one of the hardest parts of these leave-takings - the fear that I will miss something big, a first something. Today, after I persuaded Katy to let me tie a string around the tooth so she could wiggle and waggle more effectively, the tooth fell out, painlessly and anticlimactically. And I praised God once again for small, tender mercies as I walk this stony path.

Your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!

Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,
I am still with you.

~ Psalm 139:16-18