Dear Lacey,
Do you remember the long-gone years of being strapped in a booster as I chauffeured your siblings all over town for hours a day? You didn’t complain much until you started getting physically sick every car ride, necessitating hospital-grade plastic receptacles be kept in the seat pocket in front of you. Boy, am I glad you grew out of that!
With so many drivers in the family, you’re the only one needing rides anywhere anymore. Instead of dreading my daily chauffeuring duties, I’ve come to treasure our car trips back and forth to your school, to your gym, and to your friends’ homes all over town. I now realize how fleeting these uninterrupted moments together are, and not to mention I covet the times of driving home alone with nothing begging for my attention except my audiobooks. When not going over your stresses about the day ahead or reliving the most interesting or upsetting events of the day that’s just passed- we’re blasting and belting our favorite tunes together. There was a time when we’d listen to audiobooks together, but then you decided audiobooks made you just as carsick as reading physical books. I finally gave up the battle of trying to convince you that was impossible, but there is now a new battle. You’ve become quite opinionated about music and there is only so much Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo I can take. And just last week you rolled your eyes when you opened the car door after school and said in a tone that only a thirteen-year-old girl can pull off, “Please don’t make me listen to the weird blue flower song the whole way home again.”
For the most part, you don’t mind my favorite worship tunes or singing along to Adele and Chris Stapleton. But the one musical genre we can always agree on is good ole country! And thankfully, you, unlike your father and siblings, support my habit of playing the same song on repeat for days on end until we’ve finally had our fill. After the umpteenth time a song is played however, the words become etched in your inquisitive mind, and you begin wondering about deeper meanings. Inevitably our jam sessions get interrupted by your thoughtful questions, and sometimes your questions even end (thanks to Walker Hayes) with your first ever dinner at Applebee’s including a Bourbon Street Steak and an Oreo Shake. After all, we are fancy like that!
A few years ago, you were playing this one song on repeat- Beautiful Crazy by Luke Combs. Ten-year-old you eventually turned the radio down, at my favorite part of course, to ask some questions. That car ride proved quite a significant moment for your momma, and I’m so thankful I thought to rush home and jot our conversation down in my favorite journal:
Lacey: “What does it mean to wear your heart on your sleeve?”
Mom: “It’s the opposite of hiding your emotions- you know like how you always know how Mommy feels on the inside because I accidentally show it on the outside.”
Lacey: “Well, not always. If the phone rings or someone comes over you act happy even when you’re not.”
Mom: “Hmmm…that’s so nice of you to notice and point out.”
Lacey: “So who is he singing this song to?”
Me: “I assume his wife but that is only because it sounds like they probably live together. I guess it could just as easily be his girlfriend.”
Lacey: “Mom! You’re crazy! No way! I’m pretty sure he is singing to his daughter.”
After I burst out laughing, a heated debate ensued. I opted NOT to explain to you then that daughters don’t get “come-get-me” looks in their eyes or drive daddies wild in quite the same way this song is describing. But no matter how many times I laughed and argued with you, you were fiercely adamant this song was a daddy sweetly serenading his daughter.
After dropping you off, I consciously left your choice song on repeat- determined to sort out your confusion. Much of the song is just a massive list of this girl’s faults- like being a terrible driver, taking forever to get ready, and always being late. This man’s significant other (or according to you, daughter) is clearly fickle, unpredictable, indulgent, and highly emotional. Oh dear! Has Daddy made you feel that way, too!? I suppose he does use the word “crazy” to describe the messes and emotions we tend to leave lying around (or the cabinets and drawers we leave open). However, the song’s true message is how this man finds this girl’s type of “crazy,” absolutely beautiful! He expresses not a shred of annoyance or irritation and even says she’s unforgettable, she amazes him, and he can’t help but be a fool for her! This man adores this girl despite her “crazy.” And that certainly is how your Daddy feels about you.
Still, it’s obvious this song is not about parental love, but being “in love.” The big difference is a parent’s love, while ideally unconditional and gracious, is in no way blind! Come to think of it, Lacey, it is highly likely, (living together or not) this couple is not married- unless perhaps they’re newlyweds. Not because married couples don’t love each other, but because being “in love” makes you blind and a bit stupid. When you are “in love,” even a person’s awkward or annoying faults are cute and worthy of praise. It’s like looking at someone in a vanity mirror at just the perfect angle under the perfect light. Being married is more like seeing another person through one of those magnifying mirrors you use to find every stray hair that needs plucking, blemish that needs eradicating, or scar that needs covering. You are blind when “in love” by no choice of your own- it’s an intense force of nature, as instinctual and natural as the overwhelming love you feel for your child after you see them for the first time.
Married love is different. It is gentle, steady, comfortable even. Over time it becomes seasoned and weathered. It is a choice. Once the instinctual and natural attraction or blindness to faults disappears (and it always does), you have to daily choose to overlook irritations and annoyances and learn to search for the beautiful in the crazy. Not all marriages are loving, but even in an ideal marriage people fall in and out of love many times in a lifetime together. A dear friend once told me marriages that last a lifetime inevitably go through multiple deaths and rebirths. Even so, you never go back to being unconsciously blind like in the beginning. We’ve had enough friends and family who’ve suffered greatly in difficult marriages or devastating divorces for you to personally know not every home is loving and happy. And you are well aware that even happy homes go through hard seasons. And in every season there are still storms in the shape of flaring tempers, tension, grief, conflict, anxieties, and irritations. I sincerely hope none of my children ever face having to choose between staying in a truly difficult marriage or facing a devastating divorce, but if they do, one thing is certain- they will not be facing it alone. Of course, they have a perfect Father in heaven who has gone before them and will be coming behind them to clean up the messes they leave in their wake. But they also have two imperfect parents as well as biological and spiritual siblings to walk alongside them who will stand by them and love them no matter what. Even when they find themselves wearing too much of their heart on their sleeves, driving too fast, showing up too late or not at all, falling asleep, and taking crazy chances just like that nutty girl in your song.
I remember that drive home from dropping you off so clearly. By the second chorus, I could no longer see through my tears as I continued to process our conversation…
“Beautiful, crazy. She can’t help but amaze me.
The way that she dances, ain’t afraid to take chances.
And wears her heart on her sleeve.
Yeah, she’s crazy, but her crazy’s beautiful to me.”
My heart was bursting with joy that my little girl knew and felt the kind of love described in this song since the day she was born. Thankful it will never feel out of any of my children’s grasp to believe God is a good and dependable Father who keeps his promises, never leaves or forsakes them, loves them fully in all their craziness and imperfections, and who truly delights in them. Thankful for their imperfect Daddy who has stayed, loved, and served his family faithfully despite his own seasons of suffering, loss, crisis, and the endless irritations and grumbling reflected in the magnifying mirror of his home. My own heart finds healing watching Daddies sacrifice their own ambitions, comforts, dreams, and desires for the sake of their children or family.
But my heart was also breaking for the little girl I used to be who never knew this kind of steady love as a child. In that moment, and possibly for the first time, I started to have grace on myself. I understood why, even now as a grown-up, I sometimes struggle to believe anyone really loves me beyond obligation, your doting Daddy and my Heavenly Father included. Pretty sure before your silly question about this silly song it never once occurred to me that a love song might be written by a father to his child. This song that made you feel loved by your daddy, would have no doubt, even at the age of 10, left me with a hunger for attention, acceptance, and affirmation. I’m not sure I consciously realized a man could love a girl with such intensity without romance or needing something in return. But I concur that the love in a Daddy’s eyes for his children is more unrelenting and intimate than romance. Or at the very least, it has no conditions, and it lasts forever. Who knew there was a reasonable, even possibly physiological or psychological, explanation that I was a bit boy crazy and always seeking the approval of authority figures growing up? Sometimes you complain about the boy crazy girls at school or the do-gooders always trying to be the teacher’s favorite. Go easy on them, Lacey, remembering we don’t choose our strengths, weaknesses, gifts, or limitations any more than we choose the places, times, or families we are born or adopted into.
It’s been three years since our little disagreement about this song’s subject, and while you no longer stand behind the claim it’s from a daddy to his daughter, you do still have a daddy who is “a fool for you.” Recently, this song came on and it got me thinking once again about this crazy beautiful thing we call love. The natural instinctual loves that just happen to us as well as the loves we choose. In the course of our lives, we each experience unique ways of knowing and loving other people. Some people marry young and then spend a lifetime falling in and out love until death does them part. Some never marry or experience such rejection or betrayal in marriage that they never quite understand how marriage could possibly reflect God’s perfect love for them. I never knew the faithful dependable love of a father the way you do, and sometimes it’s mothers who fail, leave, or die. But even when we have two living parents doing the very best they can, their imperfect love will inevitably let us down and will often feel shallow or obligatory. How many times have you told me that I only love you because I’m your mom- because I have no choice. This is true of course, but not in the way you think. I’ve never had a choice, but not because I’ve been coerced, commanded, or forced to love you. I have no choice because my love for you started growing when you were in my womb, and it flows from the deepest part of my being. It’s in my nature to love you and even if I wanted to stop loving you I couldn’t.
There’s yet another dimension of parental love I’ll likely never have the joy or privilege of experiencing. The unbreakable bond between an adoptive parent and the child they’ve chosen to love. A love that is just as powerful, just as deep, and just as eternal as my love for you, but a love that began with a conscious choice, careful planning, life-long commitment, and great cost. While it may be easy for you to understand the sure goodness, mercy, and faithfulness of a God who never leaves or forsakes us, friends we know who’ve been adopted: James, Jonathan, Sutton, Samuel, Thomas, Ainsley, Ember- they will likely never have to question the steady goodness, mercy, and faithfulness of a God who rescues, redeems, and chooses to make us his own.
How fitting that God’s Word uses a variety of earthly metaphors to express and convince us of His multi-dimensional love. A love that according to Ephesians 3:18-19 is incomprehensible. A love with a length, width, breadth, and depth surpassing human knowledge. A natural love flowing from the deepest part of his being. He could no more stop loving us than he could stop being God. Hebrews 6 says that this love, flowing from His nature, is on its own, certain and unchangeable. But because he wanted to prove it to us even more convincingly, he added an unbreakable oath. There are now two certain and unchangeable realities testifying to the sure and steadfast love of God- his nature and his promise. He calls us both his beloved, who he can’t help but love, and his bride, who he has chosen to love. And if that was not enough, he also declares us his children- by both birth and by adoption. His love is a multi-dimensional perfect love that is both natural and by choice. It is deeper, wider, longer, and infinitely bigger than we can think or imagine.
I hope you are always surrounded by the love of brothers, sisters, and friends, and I hope your dreams of a fairytale wedding and a home full of children come true one day. But I also hope you’ll experience, at least once in your life, the intoxicating inescapable thrill of being “in love” with a man who finds your crazy beautiful. And I hope this man has as much self-discipline, integrity, and wisdom as your Daddy, so that his deeper love for you, for his family, and for God ultimately override the stupidity and blindness that comes with being “in love.” After all, your heart is especially tender, all our hearts are deceitful above all things, and this thing we call being “in love” always ends in heartbreak to some degree this side of eternity. It is the most unconditional, unpredictable, unexplainable, and uncontrollable earthly dimension of love you’ll ever know. I realize you don’t especially like feeling out of control, but if you do ever find yourself in love, don’t despise it. Rather let it serve to remind you of the unfathomable, inexplicable, reckless, and determined love of Christ. The difference of course between being “in love” and God’s love for us “in Christ” is that as intense as it is, his love is also gentle, steady, unchanging, and it never fails.
I am forever thankful God made you the Spaulding baby sister and for the way our family’s love for one another reflects God’s fierce and faithful love for us. I am thankful you are also loved well by extended family and dear friends who have become like family. And I am thankful you have witnessed and tasted the sweetness of true friendship and belonging among the family of God. Not everyone will know the fierce protective love of a sibling or parent, the deep abiding love of a true friend, or the transcendent love shared between brothers and sisters in Christ which exists outside of time and space. Not everyone marries or even falls in love, and not everyone has children by either birth or adoption. My prayer is that every imperfect and incomplete love you do get to experience in your lifetime will give you a taste of another dimension of God’s infinite perfect love for you- even when the imperfect loves exist or end in heartbreak and grief this side of eternity.
I love you fiercely and forever!
Mom