Naomi's Hands

The first thing I noticed about my baby daughter was her hands.

They were perfectly shaped. Perfect baby hands that had been formed inside of my own body.

And they looked just like mine. Miniature replicas of the my own hands that I stuff in my pockets when I'm trying to hide my body, or blow-dry my hair, or pot a plant. She had my hands. It might have been the first thing I said when they put the new bundle of her in my arms:

You have my hands, baby girl.

And then I realized what a giant responsibility it was: giving her my own hands. She didn't get my eyes (hers are blue) or my hair (blonde like her daddy), but she did get my hands.

These are hands that I've used to hold my husband in love, to wipe away someone else's tears, and to soothe my older daughter's nightmares. I've prepared meals, swept floors, and folded laundry with my hands. I've written letters, typed poems and strummed a guitar. These hands have played games, turned cartwheels and have hidden my face in laughter.

But I've also used them to hit, to steal and to keep people away. I've used my hands for things that are wrong. Very wrong.

What an enormous thing, to give my daughter the tools of both good and evil. How will she use them? Will she make the same mistakes I did? Or will she use them better than I ever was able to?

The only thing I can do is teach her. And practice. Use my hands for the good things every day and maybe she'll watch and mimic me. Maybe, if I can do what I've been called to do each day with the hands God put at the end of my arms, some of it will rub off on her: the one who inheirited the two-year-old version of them.

My kids get me. All of me and just me. The good and the bad. They get the dream-soothing hands and the hide-my-face-in-embarrassment hands. They get them both. They get the triumphs and the mistakes.

I pray for my little daughter, still two years old and still using her hands to "fly" from the car window and to discover new things on a mountain trail. I pray that she'll use her hands to make the right choices and that she'll do what she has been called to do, whatever that is. I pray that she'll be proud, someday, that she's inherited her mother's hands.