My Gentle Soul

Emma is a rare soul. And I'm not just saying that because she's mine. She cares about every single living thing on the planet. She gets tears in her eyes when my dad mows over the weeds in our yard... you know... the ones that look like flowers? She ran into my room one night recently with one of her books on wildlife (she loves animals) and I could tell she was on the verge of a breakdown and I asked her what was wrong... that's when she showed me what she was reading about in this book. It was a section on lions. And there were pictures of lions hunting. And a lion taking down a zebra. As soon as I saw it, she burst into tears saying that poor sweet zebra, why was that lion doing that? She just could not understand why that lion would kill that poor zebra just to eat. Couldn't it eat something that was already dead?

And she's really like that about everything. Thank goodness she's okay with me killing flies and wasps, because I do that often around here. And she's not a fan of snakes and spiders. But pretty much everything else... if it's alive, she loves it. And that includes flowers. She brought me a beautiful buttercup from my grandma's yard last week and I put it in a cup of water and it was beautiful for several days, but finally yesterday, it was slimy and dying and she got very sad and all she could say was how beautiful it was and she couldn't believe we had to now throw it away. She has a heart of gold and she's so very gentle.

My grandma has a bunch of cats. We live on a farm and the cats are a plenty. They just multiply around here. There is one cat, however, that is so precious. We love him. He follows us home every time we go to my grandma's house and he just loves both my kids and they love him. I wish he would stay at our house, because I have a feeling he would end up being a house cat and that's what he wants most... to be a house cat. He's the one who jets in the door every time you open it, but you can't get mad because he's just so sweet. My cousins call him Tanji, but we call him Garfield. My kids love Garfield and that's what he looks like, so that's what we call him! :) Friday, I had a photo shoot and we went over to my grandma's because she has that gorgeous yellow bush you see down there and it's already blooming, and I wanted to use it! :)

While we were waiting Emma and Garfield were loving on each other and I just couldn't resist.

You can see that Emma is so gentle. Garfield was loving all the attention Emma was paying to him. And toward the end, he actually started licking Emma's hand. It was the most precious thing. And I think it truly personifies how very gentle Emma is. Inside and out.

I am so lucky that God chose me to be her mother. I only hope that I always nurture that beautiful spirit of hers.

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I wrote the post for Noah's second birthday today also, if you'd like to read it, click here! :)