August 1, 2026

Lauren is 22 today. She learned she was pregnant just days before her 21st birthday, so she never got to raise a glass to celebrate. She’s had a big year becoming Bennett’s mom, and she and Gavin are rocking parenthood.

Like a lot of parents of grown kids, Paul and I won’t get to see our girl on her birthday. Life is busy for all of us and their little family is spending her birthday together and we will celebrate Lauren’s birthday on Monday night. We FaceTime most nights to see how Bennett is growing and changing, but I can’t wait to hug all three of them and hear all the stories.

I’ve been calling Lauren My Lovely since she was fresh from the womb. It always seemed to fit her and was just the way my mind always thought of her when sentiment and hopes and promises and goodness and emotions and tender feelings needed to be named. My Lovely. And she always has been lovely. Flawed to be certain, though less than you’d expect with the parents she was raised by. But Lauren is genuinely lovely of face and heart and manner.

The day of her wedding to Gavin, she pressed a little booklet into my hand before we said goodbye. The front cover says Momma, and inside it’s just a few pages handwritten by her. It’s the tenderest gift she’s ever given me aside from herself. She blessed me on every page. But what caught my breath and made me cry was how she signed the last page…”I love you—Lovely.”

How many times have I called her My Lovely through the years? How many times have I wondered if she ever really connected with that nick name and if she understood that to me, it wasn’t just a nickname. It is what I believe about her. But with those sign-off words, at least to this Momma who maybe just reads it the way I need to read it and you won’t change my mind, she claimed what I’ve always known about her to be true. She is lovely.

She is so much and so many things, but My Lovely is what she is to my heart. She is good in an honest and true fashion. She is strong and a total badass with now 9 surgeries (let’s please stop). She is dedicated and hardworking. She is wrong sometimes and hard-headed. She is afraid of losing control. Anxious. Humble and humbling. Child of the Most High King. She is Ruth saying “where you go, I will go.” A natural-born wife and mother. Funny and kind. She is right sometimes and she knows it. She is My Lovely.

Happy, happy birthday. I miss you, My Lovely.