Dedication

It's been a fuzzy past couple of days around here. Alot of being awake and not much sleeping (future blog post on that later)

But this past weekend was very special, no I'm not going to go into a Mother's Day post....although, I could, I have an incredible mother who could easily take up a whole blog post. (Mom, you are amazing and I love your dearly!) And I also have two amazingly sweet boy's who made me a mama so that I can happily celebrate such a day.

However, this past Mother's Day we got to do something very special and dear to my heart. We got to dedicate our Bennett boy at church.

This little baby boy who overtook our hearts 20 months ago.....

Photo: Amy W Photo

Photo: Amy W. Photo

Photo: Amy W. Photo

.....Is growing, and changing, and turning into quite the toddler.

Seriously, he's got one heck of a personality. Sweet as pie one second and fire the next. But mostly sweet. I swear empathy seeps from his little heart. He is the first to kiss, hug and stroke my face if needed. He wraps his arms around my neck and squeezes with all his might. He is a lover. And a follower of his brother. He watches, and follows, and tries to imitate, respond, and be everything Cole.

I can tell when he's concentrating because his little tongue sticks out, just like his daddy does (and like his mama used to do before she would haul off and hit her sister....sorry, Joy).

And he is showing me just exactly how much I can't rely on myself to do this mothering thing. Daily, I have to go to my Lord in prayer because I don't know what I'm doing....probably 99.9% of the time. For all the ways I thought I had this parenting thing figured out with Cole (which wasn't a lot, might I add) he is making me start from scratch. And the need to then throw in some more prayer.

I knew when they announced at church that they were doing baby dedications on Mother's Day,  it was time. It was time to stand before our church family and ask for the support and prayers that we needed to raise this firecracker of a boy.

It was an opportunity to publicly proclaim that we would try to raise him to walk with Christ, to be a leader of all things good, and to grow in strength and love of our God. A chance to ask for the help that we so desperately need, the prayer that we can keep up our end of the bargain, and for support and direction in the times when we fail.

Because we will, fail that is. It's inevitable in this journey called parenthood.

So we spent our morning sweating, full of nerves, and rejoicing as we spoke and shared our journey with the family we call church. And we gave this bow-tie laden boy to God, to His plan and not our own. How we pray he tucks these words into heart as he grows older in years.

Below, are some pics as we spent being surrounded by family and friends.

We arrived and Bennett looked like he was about ready to pass out from exhaustion ....perhaps if he had spent the night sleeping....

And then we waited for the cue to head up front.

After heading up front and listening to all the other parent's, Bennett seemed to need to distract himself from all the staring faces. So he started poking my eyes saying "eeeeeeeeye's" and moved on down to my nose, lips and then homing in for kiss after kiss. The kid was working it.

At this point, unknown to myself, he was flipping and twisting around, doing the whole jello move to get out of Kyle's arms. And I was trying to recover from the tears that I had pouring down my cheeks.

Our Dedication to our Bennett Boy

"When trying to decide what to name our baby boy, we came across Bennett, and it was one of the first names we both actually agreed on. Then Kyle happened to look up the meaning, it meant "Blessed one" and we knew that Bennett would be his forever name.

Even while in my belly we knew that this little boy was very blessed and would bless us more than we could ever imagine. At just 28 weeks we were  reminded that our blessed little one was not our own, was not in our hands, and was not ours to bring into this world. But he was God's. We listened as our doctor told us that it appeared our baby may not be growing, and that the ultrasound showed signs of enlarged ventricles in his brain. In that moment we had no where else to turn but to the God that created him. In that moment we knew God had great plans for him, what they were...we didn't know.

At 36 weeks amazingly what seemed to be our millionth u/s they cleared him of all complications, and he was born to us at 39 weeks full of life, spunk, and so much sweetness.

We wanted to publicly dedicate Bennett today, as a way to ask for the constant prayer, the constant support and the constant reminder that while God generously gave him to us to parent him, that he is ultimately not ours. Just as we had to trust Him with his life in the womb, we want to do so with his life in our arms. We know we will make mistakes, we will fail and fall....but we want to do everything in our earthly power to raise him in the light, to teach him to walk the straight and narrow, and to show him what it is like to fall in love with a God who loved him first. Our prayer is that once he finds that love he will let it take over his heart completely.

Thank you for praying alongside us and for holding us accountable as we raise our son."