Having a child is amazing; amazing simply because as a parent, that child is yours. As a parent, I get to love, cherish, guide, and discipline my beautiful daughter that I carried for nine months and then went through labor in order to bring into the world. Absolutely amazing.
Since this is my first year as a parent through the week of Christ's death and resurrection, I seem to be feeling things differently. The idea of God the Father watching his son endure pain and torment on the cross takes on a whole new meaning. As a parent, I hate it, absolutely despise it, when Anika is in pain. The pain can be as little as a slight bump of her head or more extreme like getting her finger pinched by her carset buckle. To see her face look up at me, tears forming in her eyes, beginning to cry as if to beg me, "Make the pain stop, Mommy. I am hurt and I need you to help me," makes me ache for her. Of course I wish that at my touch, the pain would be instantly gone and she would immediately smile and be ready to play again, the feeling of pain a forgotten experience. All I can do is hold her, rub her back, murmur sweet expressions of my love for her and how everything will be okay in a moment, that the pain will not last.
How tragic a day was the cross for our Father God to watch his son, his only son, go through the physical agony of crucifixion and the spiritual agony of hell. For God to choose to do nothing to help his son, to decide not to send any sort of comforting words, to remain silent when Jesus looked up into heaven, searching for his Father's face and cry, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus knew that at any moment the Father could have ended his son's pain, make it instantly vanish.
How could God have done it? How could he forsake his own son and put him through that pain?
God turned his face away from his son and looked upon his daughter: Joelle Dawn Riezebos. He looked away from one child in order to save millions of his children, including me, from crying out from eternal pain and suffering apart from Him.
God must have focused on me, and the glory that awaited Jesus after enduring all this pain, or how else could a Father watch his child suffer? I am forever grateful that God is my father, for the sake of the son, and that he did allow his son to die for me so that I might be with Him.
Hallelujah!
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
No, We Haven't Fallen Off the Face of the Earth...
I am a terrible blogger. LAZY is my only word to describe why I have not updated pictures or news of our little family lately. Not that I have been lazy in life, just lazy when it comes to opening up blogger, starting to type, finding some pictures...
So here are the highlights of the Riezebos household over the past couple months:
March 19th Garry, Anika and I drove down to Lincoln, NE to visit Anika's newest friend in the world, second cousin Evelyn Joanna. Anika was very interested in the baby. We were very excited to celebrate God's gracious gift to Amy and Marcus with a safe, fairly smooth delivery and a beautiful, healthy baby girl.
March 21st marked Anika's turning SIX MONTHS OLD! She is a mover and loves to explore by scooching and army crawling all over the house. I cannot leave anything on the ground that she should not have because she will be by the forbidden item in two seconds. Here's some pretty six month pictures!
Anika loves Jake
March 25th, I woke up in the morning, looked out the window, and saw...
April came with my baby growing more and more adorable every day. Here are some pictures from early in the month.
Anika is now capable of sitting up all by herself, but she rarely sits still as she would prefer to move around and grab toys and explore.
And here she is, in all her SEVEN MONTH majesty! I cannot believe how fast this is going. Everyone says time flies, but I never imagined it would go by this quickly. And I hear it gets worse...
In other news, I am painting our house (finally) and getting rid of the colors I didn't like. So here are all the before pictures. I'll hopefully post the afters SOON! Although painting a house with a baby is quite a challenge. I have to wait until this weather gets warmer so that I can open the windows to vent the paint smell without it getting 55 degrees in the house...
So here are the highlights of the Riezebos household over the past couple months:
March 19th Garry, Anika and I drove down to Lincoln, NE to visit Anika's newest friend in the world, second cousin Evelyn Joanna. Anika was very interested in the baby. We were very excited to celebrate God's gracious gift to Amy and Marcus with a safe, fairly smooth delivery and a beautiful, healthy baby girl.
March 21st marked Anika's turning SIX MONTHS OLD! She is a mover and loves to explore by scooching and army crawling all over the house. I cannot leave anything on the ground that she should not have because she will be by the forbidden item in two seconds. Here's some pretty six month pictures!
Anika loves Jake
March 25th, I woke up in the morning, looked out the window, and saw...
April came with my baby growing more and more adorable every day. Here are some pictures from early in the month.
Anika is now capable of sitting up all by herself, but she rarely sits still as she would prefer to move around and grab toys and explore.
And here she is, in all her SEVEN MONTH majesty! I cannot believe how fast this is going. Everyone says time flies, but I never imagined it would go by this quickly. And I hear it gets worse...
In other news, I am painting our house (finally) and getting rid of the colors I didn't like. So here are all the before pictures. I'll hopefully post the afters SOON! Although painting a house with a baby is quite a challenge. I have to wait until this weather gets warmer so that I can open the windows to vent the paint smell without it getting 55 degrees in the house...
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