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So this post originally started out as an update about Paisley, and turned into this.......

Now, I won't lie.

I'm not a huge fan of not sleeping....I like my sleep.....A LOT.

But I realized the other night, at 4:39am, all the time I've wasted being lethargic and delirious during Paisley's night-feeds. So for the past handful of nights, I've spent my time in the quiet dark, nursing my precious girl and pouring out my heart to God in desperate prayer for my daughters.

Prayers for their safety, physically and emotionally.

Prayers for their life; that they would always be cared for and provided for.

Prayers that their hearts would grow to love their Heavenly Father and desire to serve Him and honor Him with all they do.

Last night I spent my time praying for their future husbands, future in laws and future marriages. That God would use me to raise them to be women of dignity, purity and integrity and with the values they will need to be wives who will respect and love their spouses. That God would be shaping and raising and drawing their husbands to Him, even now (while they are probably still in diapers). That He would place in their lives quality and Godly men that would love them, teach them and guide them; challenge them and walk beside them; and be an example to them.

Two nights ago, I prayed for their friends. I have no idea where I would have wound up, and the heartbreaks I wouldn't have made it through, had it not been for the amazing friends I was surrounded with.

I found myself begging, begging God to protect my girls and their future husbands from this world. I felt so very helpless. Then I found myself asking for faith to trust that God hears and cares and is capable of doing such.

I know how silly that might sound. Being raised in a Christ-centered home all my life and watching God faithfulness come through time after time, one would think there would be no room in my mind for doubt. But those of you with kids (I hope) can understand the fierce sense of protection that comes with holding your babies for the first time. Knowing you would do anything for them and knowing (thinking) that no one can take better care of them than you can.....not even the one who created them.

I know, silly.

I'm having such a hard time trusting God with my babies.

I'm finding it so difficult to believe that the very hands that knit my perfect girls together in my womb; that the one who has known each day of their life since before the foundations of the earth were laid; that the one who knows the number of hairs on my daughter's head's and catches each tear, cares enough about ME to answer my pleas for them. I can't trust that I'm "spiritual" enough for my prayers to matter to such a Holy God.

So I feel like I need to beg, plead and bargain in a desperate hope that God could find time to look after my (His) children.

It occurred to me that Satan has me convinced that I'm not good enough to have my prayers listened to and answered......that I need to have it all together to know that my prayers are honoring to God.

It's taken much time and prayer and scouring up every ounce of faith and belief that I have to bring myself to a place where praying for protection for my daughters and then believing that those prayers are being answered by an Almighty, always faithful and very loving God who truly does care for my children and adores them exponentially more than I ever could.

But in all truth, it will only be daily, and by the power of the Holy Spirit that I will be able to let go, give it all I have and then trust the One who made them with everything else.

I look back on my childhood, the way the world appeared to me as a child growing up. Then I look back on my teenage years, and all of the pressure and expectations that seem to bombard me at every turn. Then I look back on the years of my 20's and how young I actually was when I thought I was all grown up. It's then I see that just in my lifetime, how much further we have slipped. I see that things that would have been outrageous and disgusting when I was a teen, are now the social norm.

I see these things and I cringe in wonder of what the world might look like when my own girls are navigating the foreign waters of teenage-hood. What will the social norms be when it's their turn? What will be considered "beautiful"? What will it look like to be "cool" and what kind of person will you have to be to be "popular"? And goodness, what will be called "fashionable"????

Deep breath.

Then I am gently but surely reminded about who is on my side, and even more, who is on their side......and if that's the case, who, then, can be against them?