Dear Graycen

Dear Graycen,

Graycen and her mom Christen

Princess Graycen Rochelle Rogelstad has a very nice ring to it. Welcome to a wild and wonderful place – the McClelland/Rogelstad family. As the newest little princess in the household there are a few things that you should know.

Your appearance today, April 19, 2015, was a few days beyond the due date and in your own good time thus proving that medicine is as much practice as it is a hard science. Well done young lady. Your new family, extended family and friends, and their friends and family have been eagerly anticipating, hoping for, and praying for your arrival and now with it, you have brought us all much joy and the best sort of tears; tears of joy, gratitude, and heartbreaking thankfulness. It seems that a few of them have found their way onto my keyboard. Thank you.

It is an expressive group that you’ve joined as a family member; loud and raucous, joyful and loving, and they can be rather creative in their expressions of it. It will be fun to see how you can in one moment trigger a wild display and in the next inspire them to shush people to let you sleep while they want to dance and play at the same time.

By way of a quick introduction, I am one of your Grandpa Mac’s best of friends and I love your family to pieces. In case you haven’t grasp it yet like you’ve already grasped a dozen of their fingers, that includes you. Thanks for making us all so happy.

You’ll be bringing some changes beyond all the diapers. I will enjoy watching my friends as they morph into something even more complete as humans. Good hearted people always change when they hold a baby in their arms. Your parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, and great aunts, uncles, and grandparents are all very lucky fortunate people to have you in their lives. Please find fun ways to remind them of that as you grow up.

You will be an inspiration. You will inspire prayers of thankfulness and intercession, pleading and hope. It seems to be the destiny of children born into families of lovers and believers to be such an inspiration. I’m sure that you have sensed that those prayers and hopes have been ongoing since before your first sonogram. It’s a big burden for such a little person so bear; just smile, nod, and move along; the chapters you write will be full of plot twists but the characters in your life will help you along very well.

And this is my prayer for you; that you live a long and glorious life of inspiration. May you find your own stroke and learn to plain it out in a yardage eating pace and that when you arrive at destinations you have just enough energy to appreciate getting to wherever it is that you’ve gone and have enough strength to do whatever it is that you need to do when you get there. May your egg-beater kick keep you comfortably above the chop and allow you to see over the action and control the zone. May you always have those around you that love you, allow you to try and fail and to try and succeed, and may you always have the ability appreciate what you’ve learned while doing them both. May you find an abundance of health, love, excitement, and peacefulness. Amen.

I am looking forward to meeting you and shaking your little hand.

In His Grip,

jerry