Blue Eyes and Double-Jointed Thumbs

I’ve always sort of secretly lamented the fact that my children don’t really look like me.  I think this might be a similar experience among other interracial families where two or more races are blended together to make little people who while (according to me) possessing beautiful features, don’t really resemble either of their parents.   My kids really do look like each other, but I’ve never really been able to identify anything in them that I know for certain comes definitively from me. 

Honestly it wasn’t really that big of a deal.  But I’ve always sort of looked longingly at families where the child clearly just takes after one of their parents.  Like their genes were just stamped and replicated so obviously, there would be no question that the kids belonged there.  My nephew is an example of this.  He is like a carbon copy of my sister.  He looks exactly the way I picture my children looking before I met and married someone with dark brown skin. 

My boys were both born, beautiful brown eyes, olive skin, and don’t look like me at all.  I expected the same from my daughter before she made her appearance and for the most part I was right.  Except for two very unlikely, slightly strange features that she possesses that always make me smile, because they always remind me without a shadow of a doubt that she got them from me!  The first are her eyes.  They are blue.  Really what are the chances of that?  I’ve seen it before in pictures, but honestly if you know anything about how genetics work with determining eye color, she is a bit of an anomaly.  My husband has absolutely no history of anyone in his lineage with eyes any other color than brown.  So technically T. should have had no chance of ending up with blue eyes.  Yet I assure you she definitely has them!

The second is very quirky.  As a kid I used to love to freak out all my friends by popping my crazy double- jointed thumbs in an out of sockets.  It was my cool/weird super human trick.  Well let me just tell you the big smile I got on my face when I held my little T.’s newborn hand in mine, counted and wiggled all her fingers, and joyfully discovered her flexible double jointed thumbs!  Almost two years later it still makes me smile every time I see her popping that thumb in and out of it’s socket (she’s unaware that this is weird yet).

So seriously what is even the point of me sharing this with anyone?  Honestly I don’t really know.   They’re not really a big deal in comparison to the gift of life God has given me in my children or on a much greater scale, the gift of life He has given me through his Son Jesus.  In metaphoric terms, the gift of Christ is like a bowl of my favorite ice cream every day, and my daughter’s eye color and thumb tricks are like tiny sprinkles.  But I’m still thankful for them.  I think He gave me those sprinkles because He knew they would mean something to me and bring me joy.  He’s a generous and loving Creator.  

So God, I know you can read this, and I just want to thank you.  You deserve thanks for so much more, but for just this one second I want to thank you for blue eyes and double-jointed thumbs and for the bond of a mother and daughter.  I’m really grateful for that.  You’re the best!