I rocked her as a newborn, caring for her at only a few weeks old when my daughter, Amy, returned to her nursing job. How well I remember giving baby Corrin her two-ounce bottle, cradling the warm little bundle on one hand and patting her back with the other until I heard the requisite burp, then holding the second tiny bottle that would complete her feeding. She felt like my own baby! But when her parents came home from work, I readily relinquished the precious bundle and fell exhausted on the sofa. Who knew how hard it would be!
We had moved back from a couple years stint in Wichita, Kansas, where Howard was on staff at a large church, serving as Senior's Pastor. But we missed our Mississippi home, and our kids needed a baby-sitter. I loved it! It was a joy to watch little Corrin grow. I would put her down for a nap on our large bed, lying down beside her while she wriggled and blinked for a few minutes before those lashes over her beautiful brown eyes drooped in slumber.
It wasn't long before she was learning to crawl, imitating three-year-old big brother Reid, as he mimicked her on all fours, rocking back and forth. He would become her idol throughout her childhood, enduring his reckless foibles, such as the time the told her to turn around, then shot her in the back with his BB gun! No matter, she would put on his jeans and try to be just like him.
Corrin was quiet and shy in pre-school, but behind that furrowed brow, she was a thinker. When she was four, she and brother Reid attended a VBS at the church we were by then pastoring. On commencement night, she stood stolid and bored-looking on the platform, not singing or participating. I was convinced she hadn't gotten anything from the lessons, the theme of which was "Brave Believers," patterned after heroes of the Bible.
A couple of weeks later, Amy and I were in our pasture with Corrin and little sister Rachel, 2, when we heard the pounding thuds of the two resident horses galloping toward us at full speed. Amy grabbed Rachel, calling Corrin as we rushed for the gate. Abruptly, the horses came to a halt, and we looked back to see her raven-haired daughter holding up a stick in front of the steeds, manes still flowing from their sudden stop. She had stopped them in their tracks!
"How did you do that, Corrin?" I questioned in astonishment, to which she replied, "I'm a brave believer!"
When she was six, Corrin was reading from her children's Bible, and one day told me she was up to the story of the "Drinking Queen." I found the place and saw it was titled, "The Daring Queen," Esther.
From going on her first mission trip to an Indian reservation in New Mexico at age 10, to becoming a college junior at a Christian university, our granddaughter has been making us proud. Now she seems to have met "Mr. Right," so we can only imagine the next step in her future. Happy 20th birthday, little one!
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