My daughter Leah

Today is my daughter Leah's birthday. She is my daughter through marriage to my son Josh. But she is my daughter through and through! And I thank God for her.

When Josh was little, I prayed for the woman who would one day "take his breath away and steal his heart!" God provided Leah as a gift to Josh. I will never forget when he came home from camp telling me about a new friend - and her name was Leah.
And then I asked Leah who? and found out that Pat and Jim were her parents, and I knew them well from my days in youth and at camp. Small world got bigger that day!

Leah came into our life, her first exposure to family - at a Thomas Clan Reunion, a motorhome experience with hamburgers from a restaurant at Albert Beach! And that didn't scare her off!! We knew she was a keeper!

It was very important for us that Leah also love Ashley. Ashley looked up to her big brother, and didn't have a sister - but Leah became that special sister, and spent time with Ashley too. To this day I love that our kids love one another, and that when I see them together, they love and have fun with one another. Leah has blessed Ashley through her friendship, and Ashley has blessed her as well.

I seen Leah grow through the years into this wise godly woman whom I admire and love deeply. Leah loves life! I love to watch her and Josh together. It blesses me to see how God put two people so well suited to one another together. I love how Leah's strengths compliment Josh and vise versa.

Leah has many gifts! I love how she takes on a project and gets in there, and gets it done! She has a great eye for the beautiful things that she could do to compliment her home! She loves to learn!

Leah loves to laugh! I am so thrilled to hear my kids laughing hard again. I know that when she carried Jay, he heard her laugh alot too, and would have felt her laughing! Leah has a great sense of humour and comes up with some very funny things although often people think she is repeating Josh! Not so! Her sense of humor also compliments Josh's - together they can make us all laugh. This past weekend I heard her impersonating someone! I love that about Leah - and her eyes sparkle with all of it.

Leah is wise. She loves the Word of God. She has a way of extracting insight from things and blessing me with her insight and wisdom. I love that I have learned so much from her, and that she is willing to share it with me and others as well.
Often Leah has emailed with some encouragement or insight at times when I needed to hear it.

Leah loves Jesus - Josh and her family and friends. Leah's life is a living example of her love for Jesus. She has beauty that shines inside out!

Leah loves her friends. We have talked about friends alot. I see how Leah loves her friends, and how she loves to make them feel loved and special. She has a way of making people feel at home in their home! It is warm and loving. Leah will go an extra mile for a friend in need.

Leah is an amazing kindergarten teacher! I have had the pleasure of helping out in Leah's classroom last year, doing paper mache, which I just found out Leah hates paper mache!! Ah, no wonder she gave me the dirty work!! Just joking. I also got invited to come to their poetry reading at the end of the year. What I loved was watching Leah interact with her kids. Her gentleness just oozed from her. She laughed with the kids. She talked quietly to them and treated each one with respect and dignity. I could tell the children loved her too! It was very evident. What I saw in the classroom, I know would be even greater in her life with their children. Jay didn't get to know that as a little boy growing up here, but I have no doubt that Jay knew how loving and kind and gentle his mommy is, as he would have heard all her interactions with the children, as he was there in Kindergarten too... just "incognito".

Leah is organized. I love that and wish I was more like that! She has helped me purge some stuff, and even got Josh and Ashley working one day! Leah's home exemplifies her organizing talents.

Leah gives things her all! I watched when Leah was pregnant with Jay! Everything she did was very intentional, well thought out. She was so disciplined in the way she cared for herself and therefore for Jay as he grew in her. Leah reads things and is able to learn, and apply that which is good for her.

There is much more that I could say, but I will end it with this. I feel like we have seen and gotten to know Leah even more as we walked alongside of her and Josh since Jay's silent birth. Many a conversation has been had since that day and I do not take our relationship for granted, but instead thank God for the way we can talk - it's deep, its authentic, its open and meaningful. We have also cried together. I have been blessed by her insight often given at times when I needed it too. I am so thankful that God has blessed me with Leah as a daughter.

Lord, on this day, I say thank you for my daughter Leah. Thank you that you brought her into Josh's life, and therefore into mine. I thank you for the years you have given to Leah and pray that this year ahead will bring great and lasting joy. I thank you for carrying her through the past almost 10 months since Jay's silent birth. God, it was only your strong arms that could have done that for her and Josh. Lord, I pray you would increase her love, her wisdom, her gentlesness and all that Leah is! I thank you for her - and for our relationship as family. May you give her strength in all ways - may you continue to bind up her broken heart - may you enlarge her gifting and circle of influence. Lord, I pray that as a teacher, you would use her to bless the lives of children in her classs. I pray you would also give her great joy this year ahead and bless the work of her hands, and all that she does and all that she is. Lord, thank you for Leah.