As I wiped the tears, and snot, and blood from her dirty face I felt the heavy weight of dread in the pitt of my stomach. Her once perfect smile was broken, the front baby tooth jagged where it was once a pristine little square.<\/p>\n
Smelling of lavender and wrapped sweetly in her pink princess nightgown, every sign of my daughter’s fall earlier that day was wiped clean, except for her crooked smile. And while I was grateful that she was unharmed, the crack remained, reminding me of how helpless I really am.<\/p>\n
Because even if I stand at the bottom of the slide, waiting to catch her, my little girl can still crash, and bleed, and cry out in pain, and there is nothing I can do about it, except hold her and comfort her, and say \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her cracked smile reminds me of my helplessness. It reminds me of how helpless I am in protecting my baby in this big scary world; it reminds me of how little control I have over my own little world, and it reminds me that no matter how much I fight to keep things pristine, and perfect, and straight, they can become cracked, and crooked, and broken.<\/p>\n
I try to control my life, to keep it neat and tidy like a pretty photo, but it doesn\u2019t fit in the neat little frame that I try to package it in. Despite my efforts to make everything just so, reality shatters my plans, leaving a web of cracks on the high polished surface of my life.<\/p>\n
But then I look at her intent blue eyes and bobbing blonde head in the rearview mirror, \u00a0her wide, crack toothed smile like a ray of sunshine, and she says to me \u201cMommy, I have a new, bigger smile.\u201d<\/p>\n
I peer at that smile that is no longer the picture of perfection. And I take a deep breath as the warm sun floods our car and I let a laugh explode from my mouth. I laugh with God, because he is full of so many surprises. I laugh because I am so helpless, and cracked, and yet through HIM I am hopeful and whole. I laugh at my daughter’s fearlessness, her innocence, and her new, bigger, beautiful smile.<\/p>\n
I look at the crack in the windshield, that I\u2019ve been meaning to fix, and I smile as I see beams of light refract from it.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I wiped the tears, and snot, and blood from her dirty face I felt the heavy weight of dread in the pitt of my…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hope-and-encouragement"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n