Dear Livia Raine,

You are loved with an everlasting love, a love that goes into eternity, a love that knew your name long before you came into being.

Today I want to tell you about that love, the love that God has for you. It is BIG, it is POWERFUL, and it will conquer all.

This morning I met with other moms of kids who go to your school. We get together to pray for you and for your teachers, for the administration and the staff. Afterwards a few of us moms talked about our daughters and their friends. Really, we talked about the struggles our girls are having with their friends. Girls are getting left out. They’re wondering who to sit with at lunch. They are making new friends and sometimes leaving old friends behind. They cry at home as they worry about who will like them and who will want to spend time with them.

I’m no different from those little girls, from you and the kids you go to school with. I’m a grown-up but I still have those feelings inside me, those worries about who to sit with at lunches and other events. I sometimes feel like there’s no one around who wants to be with me and sometimes I worry that my friends will leave me for others who live closer or are more fun than me.

Liv, we all want to be loved. We all want for someone to stick close to us. We all cry when our feelings are hurt or when someone betrays us. There is not a person on this earth who doesn’t want to be loved.

So here’s the good news:

God loves you. You belong to God!

He chose you since before the world was formed; you are a part of his holy people and he will faithfully love you forever (Jeremiah 31:3). The psalmist says it like this, that God’s love goes all the way up to the sky, as far as the clouds. It’s a big big love. It’s a love that wraps around you and keeps you safe. When you feel like hiding or when you’re feeling small, God says you can take comfort in his arms, within the shadow of his wings (Psalm 36:5-7). He loves you so very much that nothing you can imagine has the power to separate his love from you. Not the school cafeteria. Not a third grader who won’t play with you at recess. Not someone who makes fun of you for no reason or for a dumb reason or even for a good reason. God is not like that! He is all love FOR YOU, all the time. No one will ever ever ever be able to make God NOT love you. Not death, not life, not angels, not the devil, nothing in all history before you were alive and nothing in all of the future that stretches before you (Romans 8:38-39).

You have the world, Livia Raine, because you have a God that adores you, his beautiful, smart, precious, creative daughter. He has given you eternal life through his son Jesus. He has given you his spirit, to live inside your heart and direct you each day. He has given you everything in his love, absolutely everything.

May you always know this love deep down in your heart and may this knowledge make you rise above the hard things of this world. You are loved with an everlasting love, my daughter.

I am proud to be your mama.

I love you.