Well, probably not you.  I suspect that very few, if any, of my readers are named Caleb!  This is what I told my little boy a couple months ago.

One day, God thought, “I would like to have a Caleb.”*  So He made you.  And he gave you to Daddy and me (and Ariel and Sophia and Livia), so you could grow up with us and become what He designed You to be.

It occurred to me then that I have been guilty of failing to communicate this to my daughters in such blatant terms: that God wanted someone just like them, so He made them intentionally to fill those “specifications.”  They are exactly what God meant for them to be.  We all are (exactly what God means for us to be)!

That doesn’t mean He doesn’t intend for us to grow and mature, but in our essence, we are exactly what He needed to fill the specific place in His design that He put us in.

Since then, I’ve made a point of telling each of my children this (substituting their own names, of course) periodically.  Not so often that they don’t pay attention, but often enough that it’s not just a once-and-done thing.

Interestingly enough, not long after this, I had the opportunity to preview the book another blogger friend has recently written.  The book is all about blessing those around us – especially our children – and one of the things that stood out to me was the idea that blessing involves not just positive talk, but positive talk that affirms who a person inherently is, rather than what he does.

Wow.  I know that’s something I miss when I don’t get it.

That book is coming out this week, so be sure to watch for it; it’s good stuff!

*Possibly not theologically precise, but, hey, I was trying to put it in terms a baby can understand!  He has no concept of time, much less the absence of time 😉  and this “format” enabled me to talk to him as though I were telling a story.