No Harness for us, thank you very much

Well, yet another prayer has been answered!  Last week at Addison's 4 month check up, her doc said he "definitely felt something" when he did the hip portion of her physical exam, so we scheduled an ultrasound to check for congenital hip displacement.  This is apparently routine for breech babies, but for a number of reasons we didn't get it done earlier like some many babies do.  If they have it, babies are fitted with a harness of sorts, that basically holds the hips in place so that the ligaments and everything grows together "correctly." 
So I read a little about it online (my friend Denise said Brad should put a parental lock on "WebMD"), worried about it just enough to ask my friends for prayer for it, and then proceeded to pray the condition away.  We went this morning and the ultrasound showed nothing out of the ordinary.  Yay and praise God!

I should have known there was nothing wrong; she can eat her toes and isn't fazed by anything!

Last week our friend Lindsey came to take some portraits of Addison and our family.  She did an amazing job!  All the pictures are beautiful!  This may be my favorite one: Rosco is all in Addie's face, and she's not worried about it at all.  I think Brad and I fussed about this more than she did!  Our laid-back gal is a trooper

So I'm reading the book Half Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls.  It's really fantastic; a memoir, but one that's written as if you're sitting down listening to someone talk-- my favorite kind of book to read.  The other day I read something that's had me thinking about the human condition.  A mom is talking to her daughter about animals on a ranch, and she says, "Animals act like they hate to be penned up, but the fact is, they don't know what to do with freedom.  And a lot of times it kills them." 

The freedom this quote makes me think of is that which we receive through God's goodness and grace.  We were created to live in communion with God, but He provides us with the freedom to choose Him.  Don't get me wrong: I realize humans know what to do with freedom.  The problem is that we are sinful by nature and therefore often choose a path that leads us away from a walk in intimacy with Christ.  So we, whether by following a religion or on our own, design a "right" way of living and walking.  We make a list of "dos" and "don'ts," and often make our lives about following that list instead of devotion to the One who created the freedom we're allowed to enjoy.  This is what I kept thinking about while reading Walls' quote, "they don't know what to do with freedom... it kills them."  I think so often we kill the joy to be found in true communion with Christ.  And, perhaps even worse, we make our Relationship with Him about that list and show the world around us, which is filled with people desperate for someone to point them to Jesus, that a life with Him is limited.  How untrue!  A life with Christ is based on freedom beyond what we can imagine on our own! 

So, whether I'm making sense or not, my prayer is to learn to embrace the freedom found in Christ.