So God Made a Babysitter...

This week has dealt us a hand that we never expected but that is how life works because in the end we don’t control it. I have been a terrible blogger and this was not the blog I wanted to make my “comeback” with but to me blogging is a type of therapy. And in addition to it helping me I wanted to honor my dear friend. We unexpectedly lost our babysitter this week, she has been a consistent friend and caregiver in our lives for the past six years. She took Charlot when she was barely two and hasn’t stopped loving us since. She was the one to wipe my tears and calm my fears that I could love enough for another baby. She was a constant servant of others. I can almost guarantee you as she was following her Lord home her thoughts weren’t on herself they were on her family and her “kids” she was, I’m certain worried who was going to love them the way she does. And the answer to that is no one there will never be another you my dear Telpha, I love you and miss you so very much.

Last night as I lay in bed trying desperately to go find calm and go to sleep my thoughts were swirling everywhere. And they just kept coming back to all Telpha did for us. Then for some reason the Paul Harvey speech “so God made a Farmer” came into my head. I remembered that when my dear Papa passed away I found comfort in that speech in knowing that he lived a life that served his love of what the Lord provides. As I laid there I kept thinking about how Telpha also served what the Lord provides through her work of loving God’s children.

Here’s what well after bedtime thoughts bring to me.

And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise for his children and said, "I need a caretaker"

-- so God made a Babysitter.

God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, welcome sleepy babies, work all day in the home, kiss babies goodbye, fix supper, then go to and stay past midnight at a meeting planning bible school"

-- so God made a Babysitter.

"I need somebody with arms strong enough to carry a toddler and yet gentle enough to wipe away tears; somebody to hold hands, tame a fussy baby, finish the day hungry, have to wait lunch until all the kids are down for a nap, then answer the phone call of a concerned parent and tell them to call anytime-- and mean it"

-- so God made a Babysitter.

God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a child because a parent had an emergency, and watch him cry then dry his eyes and say, 'Mommy’s ok.' I need somebody who can shape manners from an unruly child, make a snowman from a milk jug, who can make a flowerpot appear like art with a child’s hand prints; who, planting time and harvest season, will finish her forty-hour week by Tuesday noon because mommies and daddies are in the field, and then pain’n from dish back,' put in another seventy-two hours"

-- so God made a Babysitter.

God had to have somebody willing to run back in the house one more time at double speed to get to the potty and yet stop and give a hug when the ought OH’s happen and they didn’t quite make it.

-- so God made a Babysitter.

God said, "I need somebody strong enough to teach right from wrong, yet gentle enough to wipe noses and tie shoes and tend the bright eyes of a newborn, who will stop her day for an hour to sing a song with a sad three year old."

It had to be somebody who’d love hard and pray often and not cut corners; somebody to cook, clean, feed, dry and change and wipe and dress and rock and tie the shoes and thaw the milk and replenish the snack supply and finish a hard week’s work with a five-mile drive to church; somebody who would become part of a family with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh, and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when a child says “I’ll just stay here.”

-- so God made a Babysitter.

To Telpha’s family, her husband Wayne and her children sorry isn’t near enough but please know that she was loved so much and every child who stepped through her door became her child. Thank you for sharing her with us.