Baby Girl

WARNING: this post contains mature themes that are not for little readers.

Well, we've passed a big milestone here! How is it that we can go from this

to this

so quickly? The infant seat has been retired, and now we're up in a big girl seat where we can see the world go by.

I am so, so grateful for my little girl. Alaina is such a joy!

I'm grateful for something else too. I'm grateful that I wasn't punished for having her. The Christian concept that each person is a valuable reflection of the image of God is still much a part of our culture. But in other areas of the world less touched by God's truth, women who have a baby girl are punished as though they had committed a crime.

If I lived in one of many Muslim countries, I could have been easily divorced in favor of another wife (or several other wives), and no one would have blinked an eye.

If I were part of a minority tribe in Tibet, and my "trial marriage" had resulted in Alaina's birth, I would have been banished to live in a goat skin hut in high altitudes where many do not survive.

In China, chances are I would have been pressured or forced to kill Alaina in the womb, so as not to waste my one chance for a child. It is hard for us to believe that all of these things are happening in 2009.

I am so thankful for my little girl. I'm so grateful for a husband who knows Christ, who delights in his girls and treats us as his most precious treasures. I am so very grateful for God's revealed word, the Bible, which offers value, protection and purpose to each of us.