His Grace is Sufficient: Happy Birthday, Holly!

So, apparently I was a difficult baby. I didn't sleep well and required 230 AM car rides to lull me into la-la land (Hello, insomnia, at an earlier age... may be why I still sit up half the night reading.) I climbed on top of EVERYTHING, including the kitchen table and the upright piano in the living room. And I also totaled a car at the age of four.

I must have been a handful.

I'm pretty sure I must have been temperamental, too, because my Dad said when he found out my Mom was pregnant with my sister, he just "prayed for a happy baby."

Yes, he actually told me that.

Which leads me to believe that I was an unhappy baby...

and I totally get that, because that temperament followed me into my teenage years.

And also because dealing with me and an unhappy baby at the same time would probably be too much.

And I was not happy about a new baby, regardless of how I look here.

I'm pretty sure I was thinking of ways to boss her around, because I LOVED bossing.

And also, I might have liked her just a little here, but that was before she decided to pee on me.

Yes, that was probably the only transgression Holly ever committed against me... and she didn't even know what she was doing.

So, a happy baby?

Yes.

A happy child.

Except, maybe, this one moment:

And also maybe when she found out that no amount of blue marker would ever turn her into Smurfette.

She was tender-hearted and kind. She loved animals... all animals. She cried when Uncle Dennis told her about killing the hogs to eat.

Me, I wasn't quite so nice.

"Um, duh, Holly. What do you think you're eating when you eat a hot dog?"

She also cried when we would discuss the plight of the Native Americans.

She just didn't understand how you could be so mean to a group of innocent people.

Especially when she loved them so good.

"Hello, my name is Holly, and I when I grow up I want to be an Indian." She proudly proclaims at kindergarten graduation.

She never held it against me that I hit her in the head with a baseball bat...she'll just show you the dent in her forehead. (And, yes, it was completely an accident. I was practicing batting and swung and didn't realize she was behind me. The glass Christmas ornament that I threw at her head... not so much an accident... but she still forgave me.)

She laughs... and you want to laugh with her.

It's a big laugh that fills up the room and the air around you and just makes you smile.

She listens and is patient and calm and always sees the good in people.

Quite the opposite of me.

She was born loving others. She'd stand in the back of the church and shake everyone's hand as they filed out after service. "God bless you, and God bless you, and God bless you." And she meant it.

She connects with others in a way that I can't understand... until I remember that prayer that Dad prayed. She has God's hand on her. I mean, we all do. Sometimes it just takes us a while to figure it out.

She loves spending time with my grandparents. She learned to drive Papaw Paul's traffic and helped him tend his plants and helped him clean out his basement, and unlike me, she didn't do it for selfish motives.

At least I don't think that she did.

When I think of true joy, joy abundant and overflowing like we're to have through Christ, through the fruit of the Spirit, I think of Holly.

And even though I am older than her, I want to be like her when I grow up.

Today we celebrate her birthday, and I am so happy that God chose me to be her big sister. She inspires me to be a better person, to believe better about others and to love harder and to look on the bright side of things.

And today, as Warren showed me those infamous black and white pictures and I picked out a spine and a nose and a forehead, I am overwhelmed.