Okay two caveats as I begin this post…

1.) I cannot take credit for coining the term “birthgiver”! Lanae, my beautifully witty 13-year-old has gifted me that term. I found it one day when I was scrolling through her texts and read “birthgiver” as one of the contact names. I chuckled and asked her if that was how she identified me. She responded with, “well yeah, you gave birth to me so that seems the most accurate”! Now when I call her, she often answers with, “hello, birthgiver, what would you like”.

2.) I am a HORRIBLE gift-giver. It is the lowest of my love languages, I have very little creativity when it comes to ideas and I genuinely DESPISE shopping so that makes it tricky to purchase gifts. Having said that, my mother is an exquisite gift-giver and often has wonderfully thought out gifts that are exactly what the receiver loves. SO….my gift today is a gift of words. Something I can do well and hopefully expresses the love and gratitude I feel for her on this day that is hers.

On to the gift.

There are a lot of things I could say about this woman. She is far from perfect, she’ll be the first to admit it. She’s got some glaring weaknesses (I haven’t met a human being yet who doesn’t) but she knows who she is and she continues to work hard to accept herself just as she is. But today I want her to remember all that is amazing about her, the strengths she has and the ways she inspires others. I want her to see herself as I see her, be in awe of the life she has lived and the things she has achieved.

We’ve had more than a few conversations about funerals (I’ll share more about that later and I promise it’s not as morbid as it sounds) and we chuckle at how the stories are always so positive and uplifting, they usually make the person sound like an absolute saint even if they are a REALLY big jerk. In all seriousness, I think it’s important for the people you love to know just how much they mean to you while they are still here. They need to know the impact they have on those around them so they feel loved, valuable, and understand just how meaningful their presence is.

Our story begins 41 years ago. The beginnings are not really mine to tell. What I can say is that I am thankful for the decision my parents made to care for and cherish each other through some very difficult times and tell you that from the very start, my mom and I shared a unique connection.

Over the years that relationship continued to grow and with it my admiration for her. To be clear, I have a pretty great relationship with my dad as well, but he has always honoured and encouraged how close my mom and I have been, not expecting or pushing for his relationship with me to be a mirror image. When I was younger, I remember many of my friends and classmates lamenting how horrible their own moms were. They would say terrible things about how mean they were. I couldn’t quite understand how people could talk about their parents that way. My mom was pretty great and even through the moments of discipline I had no doubt that she loved me and what she did was in my best interest.

As a teenager and into my young adult years we had our fair share of disagreements. Obviously we didn’t see everything eye to eye…remember how much I hate shopping, well that definitely did NOT come from my mother. She is an avid shopper, with great taste and we often clashed when time was spent in the mall together. However, in so many other areas she was my biggest cheerleader. I can’t remember a basketball game that she wasn’t in the stands. My grade 8 coach identified her by her loud whistle. He often commented, “oh, Charlene is in the building, I can hear her whistling”! My own children know when they need to come running based on that whistle, it has served her well.

When I was deciding on which university to attend, she had such big dreams for me but I had my mind made up and it really wasn’t until just a few years ago that I realized how much she would have liked me to think bigger. When James and I got engaged at the ripe, “old” age of 19 and prepared to be married 8 months later her and my dad made the choice to celebrate our decision rather than argue that we had so much left to learn before we were ready for marriage. When I was preparing to give birth to my first child she graciously agreed to attend his birth (and then told me she wouldn’t be available for any more births because she couldn’t watch her daughter suffer through that much pain). When I went back to school to finish my undergrad, she kept telling me I could do it and at the same time went back to school to finish her masters. When I went back to school again to finish my teaching certificate, she was the first to say how proud she was of me. She’s always been that way with me, giving advice or an opinion but ultimately quietly encouraging me to choose my path and then journeying it with me. I’ve never heard her say, “I told you so” when things went sideways.

I have not always been the best daughter. I think all children are blind to the sacrifices their parents have made to give them the best life. I’ve said some hurtful things, I made some hurtful choices, I’ve been oblivious to some of her own pain, grief, sorrow, sadness, and struggle. But she has never held that against me. She’s been patient and kind. Ready and willing every single time I come back to her with that moment of “a-ha”, that’s what you were trying to tell me.

In the last 10 years, my respect and admiration for her has grown significantly. Her job has been one of sadness and walking a path with people that many could not handle. She has sat at the bedside of many as they take their last breath, walked beside grieving family members, counselled medical professionals as they care for the sick and dying. It hasn’t been easy on her, she’s taken on some burdens she probably didn’t need to but she’s done it with grace and love, out of service for those who couldn’t do it for themselves. Remember those conversations about funerals? We had to find ways to help her deal with all the death and sometimes it meant a bit of black humour. Not for the faint of heart that’s for sure. But through it all, hearing her heart for the people she serves helps me to know just exactly why all four of her children chose careers in areas of service and why we each chose spouses who feel a deep desire to serve others in various capacities as well.

I am thankful for her continued zest for life, her passion for learning (which I’m 100% sure I inherited from her), her open-mindedness that allows for deep and meaningful conversations, her willingness to try new things, her dedication to relationships, her love of family and the joy she takes in seeing us all succeed. I am thankful for the sacrifices she’s made in order to help us out and her desire to be genuine, honest and truthful even when it’s not easy.

Happy Birthday mom! You are such a gift to me and I hope you know how loved you are on this day and everyday.

I’m not really one to write a huge, long birthday post every year for each of my kiddos.  I hope that they know they are special and loved without that.  In fact as they get older I imagine they won’t always appreciate having the details of their lives and birthday bashes splashed across my blog, accessible to the world.  However, there are moments that I feel the celebration of their birth is really more about my unpacking where they’ve come from and where they are going.

Lanae is my third child.  In so many ways she fits the mold of “birth order”.  She’s a middle child!  I can see that she sometimes feels forgotten, ignored, unimportant.  She yearns to shine bright but I see the crushing of her little heart overshadowed by two big brothers and a baby sister.  I know she’ll be fine.  She’s resilient, beautiful, amazing, smart and host of other wonderful attributes.  But she’s also my sweet, sweet little girl.  I long to hold her close, protect her, tell her she will succeed, she is loved, she is worthwhile and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she hears me and believes me from now until her last breath.  But I see in her a niggling of doubt.  A constant pain of uncertainty, insecurity, if you will.  And I pray that she will overcome that.

You see she is the child I prayed I would get but never fully believed I would.  I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way to those who have faced issues of infertility or who have lost a child.  What I mean is that her arrival bestowed upon me the immense privilege of experiencing life with a daughter (and in fact, granted me the opportunity to experience it twice).  After the arrival of our two boys I pondered what life might look like in a houseful of boys.  My outlook shifted a bit as I tried to wrap my mind around that.  When I first found out I was expecting our third, I had in my mind that this little one may be the completion of our family.  James told me we would be finding out the gender because he knew he could survive three boys, but the possibility of four boys was more than he could fathom.  More importantly, he needed me to wrap my head around what my life would look like long before the child arrived.  He had no interest in a wife delivering a healthy, wonderful little boy only to be overcome with disappointment because he wasn’t a girl.

But, of course, God always knows the plan.  I sometimes wonder if he doesn’t look at us with a minor smirk and say, “if only they’d just trust me, they’d know I already have it all figured out”.  In this case, I’m sure He did.  When we found out Lanae was on her way, it opened the door to possibility.

131214_MHP_Davenport_029When I look at her now I see this stunning, little lady.  I can’t imagine how different my life would have been without her.  Sometimes I struggle to “get” her.  She’s intense!  She’s affectionate but standoffish.  She knows what she wants but sometimes struggles to go after it.  She’s so, SO precious.

My privilege in raising her is recognizing the ways she is herself.  I can pinpoint exactly who she looks like, oddly a total “mini-me” of her Uncle Cam, James’ youngest brother.  But I can’t pinpoint those obvious character traits that place her more in relation to my side or James’ side.  However, I am reminded through that, that she is her own person.  She’s exactly who God created her to be and while she may find along the way that she favours certain relations in her life, I think she’ll be a much happier, content individual when she settles into the fact that she is herself.  Perfectly made for a purpose at this time in history, in this family, as Lanae Daelyn Davenport!

HAPPY 8TH BIRTHDAY SWEET CHILD.  You are LOVED!!

So while we celebrate Father’s Day every June, we also celebrate the birthday of a pretty special guy!  This year we were set to celebrate a pretty big milestone with my Dad.  60 glorious years of life!  He may beg to differ on all 60 of them being glorious but it seems appropriate that this milestone deserves a bit of exaggeration.  Needless to say that with the events of the previous month we were all finding it difficult to muster the energy and desire to put together a big shindig AND my father is not one for extravagant parties.  He is the epitome of the “strong, silent” type.  Instead we opted for a small, family gathering with just our immediate family.  A fun, photo scavenger hunt was put together, teams were created, funky hats were distributed, 60 citronella candles were purchased and food arranged.

We had so much fun celebrating the man who has quietly loved us through life.  My dad is an unassuming individual who has spent most of his life giving of himself so that his family would never go without.  I don’t think I have ever heard him complain about how difficult life can be.  Don’t get me wrong there are plenty of stories we could share about his amusing antics, making us graham cracker chicken, making us eat outside or in the garage as a punishment for poor table manners or disobedience, an encounter or two with a belt of the leather variety, etc.  Better yet, we could probably share some insider information on the fact that he’ll eat almost anything because his tastebuds are literally broken, he has a few grandkids but one little granddaughter has him particularly wrapped around her little finger, we mock him sometimes because he used to be so strict and the man we now see doting on his grandkids is not the same one we recall growing up.  But the truth of the matter is that we love him so much and he has given us an amazing amount of memories and experiences that have made us kids, the people we are today.  There are many attributes and character qualities that we can pick out in each other that remind us of the best we see if our dad.  While it wasn’t the same celebration that we’d hoped to give him and we were all aware of the little missing person that should have filled the frame of many a picture, we know the memories we created on that day will give us each a great deal of joy as we reflect on who this man is to us and why we are so incredibly thankful and blessed for his presence in our lives.

I’ve included the link for the slideshow we put together to remember the day and I think it’ll give you a better idea of just how much fun we had being silly while we celebrated this very amazing man that I am proud to call my father!

A Day of Memories


Friday, November 5th was another great day to celebrate another beautiful child in our home. Lanae is an interesting girl…she is bright, she communicates her desires and needs very clearly but above all she is determined and knows her own mind. I am always shocked at her ability to explain things to me and her perception of a situation.

Although I’m quite certain that her and I will quite often disagree on a variety of issues I am 100% aware of the fact that my love for her and who God has created her to be will remain unscathed. She is a treasure in our family and I know God has great things in mind for her.

This year has opened a great number of opportunities for her. She is attending preschool this year and thoroughly enjoying the social aspect that it awards her. We also had the opportunity to attend her first fieldtrip to the local pumpkin patch. We didn’t get much into the Fall festivities this year as it’s been an extremely busy fall so I was quite glad at this opportunity to go with her class and enjoy the usual fall activities.



Lanae is also a very family oriented person, as are all of our kids, which is definitely a direct result of having both sides of our family living in the same city or at least within a very short distance of us. So she was thrilled when her Uncle Joel and Auntie Meghan got themselves a kitten. Her name is Lily and since spending time with her Lanae is quite certain that we need to get a cat as well and name her Lily.

Lanae’s actual birthday wasn’t necessarily anything elaborate but we did give her the gift we got for her that I found on a local swap site. She loved the little baby doll bed with a canopy and her “talking” baby doll to go with it. I know she’s going to be so much fun as she grows up and I only hope I can keep up with her passion and drive.