Jaden, My Crazy Love

Sometimes I have a moment when I understand why I've always been driven to write...why it has been always been such a huge part of how I define myself. This morning my husband sent me a link to a blog entry I had made years ago when my daughter was just about 17 months old. The date/time stamp reads May 20th, 2011 12:42pm. I took a moment to read over my words from that time and I was instantly transported back there, to that shining and wonderful moment when I was still a new mother.  It makes me realize and remember that I write first and foremost for me, because having this testimony feels like the best gift I can give myself on this journey of life. My words give me the vehicle to look back, and experience those moments again in living color.  I love this entry so much because I see myself as that new mother just taking in all the joy and wonder of raising a daughter.  It is such a bright and sweet snapshot of our amazing journey as a family. 

Jaden, My Crazy Love...                                                      May 20th, 2011 12:42pm
Jaden is feeling better. There is still a slight rumbling sound when she breathes but her eyes are bright and her laughter and smiles are again effortless and joyful. She bounced around the house this morning leaving a narrow swath of destruction in her wake. She kicked over the dog's food bowl, scattering pieces across the floor, tossed my neatly folded laundry all around the living room, crushed a graham cracker under her shoe in the kitchen and left a trail of cherry puffs down the walkway. I followed after her, amazed by her energy and enchanted by her gleeful giggle. There was a moment this morning, when I was so captivated by the beauty in her little face, that the world stopped for me. There was only the morning light and the perfection of her tiny profile, still so much her father's yet still so exceptionally unique at the same time. If she would let me, I'd love to cup her little face in my hands and just study her, every inch, so I could memorize her features before they change again, before she grows up - growing ever closer to the girl, the teenager, the woman she will one day become.

When Fatih and I got married, we played Van Morrison's "Crazy Love" for our dance with our wedding party. I always loved the song. I always wanted to be loved like that, have a love that was that powerful, consuming, unconditional. Dancing with my new husband, I had felt like I had found it at last.

This morning, that song came on the radio and as I listened, I found a whole new meaning in it, a new connection in my life. That feeling I get with Jaden, the desire to hold time still and just watch her, take her all in until my heart aches with the impossible fullness of it...that's my Crazy Love. She is the thing that "brightens up my day", "takes away my troubles, takes away my grief" The heavens really do seem to "open up every time she smiles" and I feel as if I could, without any effort at all, "hear her heartbeat for a thousand miles", that same sweet sound that pulsed inside me for nine months. But nothing is more true about this Crazy Love, than the fact that her very existence makes me complete in a way I never imagined was possible...

"Yes it makes me righteous, yes it makes me whole, yes it makes me mellow down into my soul.."