A dear friend of mine (she will be known in this post as 'L') recently sent me the following email.  It's a recount of a conversation she had with her four year old son (he will be known as 'B'). And yes, I realize I need a little help with my code names - they are entirely lacking in creativity. Nevertheless, please read the following transaction of words between mother L and son B . . .

B: Mommy, there’s someone that I’m getting in love with.

L: Really, who?

B: Ummm… a girl. She has yellow hair.

L: Does she go to your school?

B: No

L: Did you meet her at Sunday School yesterday?

B: No

L: Hmmm… how do you know her?

B: I don’t know, I just do.

L: Well, does this girl your “getting in love with” have a name?

B: Yes…. Libby.

After reading this email, I laughed so hard I almost cried. Then, I really did cry.

What a tangle of emotions swirled through my mind as I thought about a boy loving my only daughter. I think my initial reaction was, quite honestly, pride. I want my children to be loved by others and I'm proud when others find them lovable. Especially when those others are non-family members who have absolutely no requirement to love them. Hey, let's face it, even their biological mother (aka ME) can occasionally have trouble finding the lovableness in Charlie and Libby. They're cute and all, but there are days when my daughter walks out the door in the morning and all I want to do is flip her off behind her back. That doesn't sound a whole lot like love if you ask me, but it's hard to find someone lovable after they've complained about every single thing you've done and said and toasted and buttered and sliced and poured and brushed and zipped and tied for them since the moment they woke up.

Damn.  My conscience is screaming at me.  I had all kinds of great ideas for this post piroetting around in my head and now I've been staring at the screen for fifteen minutes while my brain fires blanks.  It looks like I can't go on until I confess, so here goes.

I really did flip Libby off one morning when she walked out the door to go to school. 

Your mouth just dropped to the floor, didn't it?  I knew that would happen.

It's not nearly as bad as it sounds.  I mean, she didn't actually see my finger fly into the air in all it's erect glory.  As far as she knows, her mother only gave her a hug and a kiss and a big, smiley "Have a great day and be your best self and I love you, honey!" when she walked out the door that morning.  My middle finger remained firmly in it's most polite place until the door to the garage was properly shut and there was absolutely no way my daughter (nor her brother or father) could see the obsene gesture I was rudely sending her way.

In my defense, I have yet to forgive myself for doing it.  Still, I can't promise I won't do it again. Because, like all people, my kids aren't always very loveable.

I suppose I haven't actually hit the phase of life when my children have become aware of their need for love from others.  Of course, they've always known love, so why would they have any understanding of the stops we will pull out to make others love us.  And we really will pull out some serious stops, won't we?  We will go to great extremes for love.  We will do and say and plan and buy things we have no business doing or saying or planning or buying simply to win the affections of someone we deem important. 

I remember my first crush in intense detail.  He was older and adorable and a football player with a convertible and . . . he wasn't interested.  He had no desire to take advantage of my longing to make him love me.  At the time, his rejection felt like the precursor to the world ending.  Twenty-two years later, I'm grateful that boy didn't want to love me.  In fact, I shudder to think what I might have been willing to do to retain his love had he chosen to give it to me.

It won't be long before my daughter wants to earn someone's love.  And I'm not merely thinking about  Libby starting high school one day and deciding the junior wide receiver with the bulging biceps and the cool car makes her tummy tingle.  I imagine my daughter will discover her desire for love long before she discovers boys.  Humans, and especially girls, have an inherent need to belong, and I have no doubt there will be another female in Libby's life in the coming years who will have the ability to make my daughter change the way she looks, talks, and acts, all for the sake of acceptance. 

I also realize there will be a day when someone's refusal to love her breaks my daughter's heart.  L's  little boy thinks Libby is beautiful.  He thinks he loves her, and in the way only a five-year-old can, he probably does.  But one day, there will be a boy who doesn't.  One terrible, horrible, awful day, there will be a boy who isn't interested in loving Libby, and my daughter will struggle through a season of life when she feels as though everything about the world is wrong, that she's wrong. 

Surprisingly, it isn't the thought of my daughter suffering a broken heart that makes my eyes fill with hot, heavy tears.  It's the thought of Libby with a full heart.  It's the thought of her with a heart so swollen in adoration it must act; it simply can't go another day without making a public declaration for all to see.  Because further down this road of mothering, after the clicks and the crushes and the unrequited love have made scars on my daughter's soul that will never fully fade, another kind of love will enter her life. A colossal kind of love.  A love that feels right and true and unbreakable.  A love that makes Libby's confidence soar and her body sing and her world spin into an oblivion of happiness.  And when that time comes, my only daughter will make one of the most monumental decisions of her life, and of mine.  She will choose to leave our family and create her own.

The tears fall freely as I think of that day. The day our daughter walks out of our arms and into his. It seems so far into the future, but as my first nine years as a mother have proven, time flies when you're having fun (and as a parent, even when you're not).  Libby will walk down an aisle in the blink of an eye, and while I want that for her, if she wants it for herself of course, I can't imagine what it must feel like to witness your child love like that.  And I think what scares me most is the idea that in order for my daughter to love someone in such an enormous way, and to do it well, she must first love herself.  I have to teach Libby to love herself.

What an immense responsibility.  So huge and daunting, it takes my breath away. 

How do I help my daughter see there is more to her than her outward appearance?  How do I make her realize she is not merely a sum of knowledge and skills?  How do I convince her to understand her worth as a human being can never come from accomplishments and assets?

I suppose there is really just one answer.  I have to teach Libby the truth. I have to instill in her the belief that she is wonderfully and fearfully made by a creator whose love for her is immeasureable and unending. I have to teach my daughter that although she will never be perfect, she was made by a perfect God, and she will always be his.  When other girls leave her out of their games and she's standing alone on the playground without a friend in sight, God loves her.  When the cute boy with the cool car asks someone else to prom, God loves her.  When she looks in the mirror and sees only flaws, God loves her.

The only way Libby can learn how to love herself and love others, is to know what true love is. I simply have to point my daughter towards the one and only author of true love. And while I do it, I have to remember one very important thing . . . God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only son.  He would not condone flipping anybody off.