SUZI: Cooper's Dedication

Cooper was dedicated to the Lord at our church on Sunday, September 5.  It was a special time when Scott’s dad prayed over him and asked the Lord to guide his footsteps and bless his life.  We were wearing  traditional Arabic outfits – Scott and Cooper in matching dishdasha and I in a thob (dress).  It was a nod to the place Cooper was born.  There we were…the pack of three, standing gracefully and calmly before the church and the Lord.  

But there's always a back-story…

I was trying to figure out what Cooper should wear for this particular event.  We had been offered an all white little suit for him.  It was cute, but it just didn’t seem to match him.  At the last minute, I remembered our Jordanian clothes, so that somehow seemed like a better fit.  I was trying to find some shoes for Cooper to wear and found some sandals he had.  Upon trying the sandals, I found that his darling feet (a.k.a. “Hulk Feet”) wouldn’t squeeze into them.  However, with some adjustments to the sandals (cutting out one of the straps that goes across the foot) I managed to make them fit. 

[Cooper normally does not have shoes on those feet of his for several reasons:  1) Cooper’s thick feet don’t fit easily into shoes  2) He greatly dislikes having them on and rubs his feet together until they fall off  3) He’s four months old…does he really need shoes?  He’s going to have to wear shoes his whole life.  Why can’t his feet have a break for now?  Yes, they look cute, but because of reasons 1 & 2, I usually skip even trying.  I sometimes get the “Cooper, where are your shoes?” question upon which I usually just lift up a foot for inspection and ask: “You wanna get shoes on these feet?”  Cooper has socks that look like shoes, but I’m finding that he’s not even very happy with socks.  But I digress…]

So the morning of the dedication, I tried to time everything just right so Cooper would be fed, changed and dressed in time for church.  I hoped he would at least last through the dedication.  Of course, waiting for the last minute then caused us to be several minutes late.  On the way, he was wearing a bib in case he spit up.  The shoes didn’t go on the feet until we got to the church.  We were finally seated in our pew for mere seconds when we realized Cooper was especially energetic.  He was bouncing about and flailing his arms and we were pulling out stuffed puppies, pacifiers and all sorts of distractions.  One pacifier was soon  launched over the pew in front of us, but being the neurotic mom that I am, there's at least one backup of everything.  Cooper started rubbing his feet together.  I would reach over and pull his sandal straps back on while Scott did his best to hold onto to what he affectionately called "a 19 lb hand-tossed pizza."  Cooper let out a warning grunt to let me know that if those shoes didn’t come off his feet immediately, the Wail would come next. 

The shoes came off. 

And then, just after removing the protective bib, Cooper spit up – all over the front of the cute little dishdasha that I had managed to keep clean.  I looked at Scott and we both laughed: “Ok…now it’s perfect.”

It was finally our time to go to the front for Cooper’s special prayer.  Scott said that Cooper continued to bounce and squirm to the point that it took all of Scott’s concentration to keep him from bounding out of his arms (EDIT: Scott remembers absolutely nothing of the ceremony except thinking, "Don't drop him, don't drop him!").  But Cooper flashed his beautiful gummy smile at everyone and all was okay.

Thankfully for us, the Lord blesses whether your son is sitting still while wearing shoes and spotless clothes or not!  His presence and touch comes to fill hungry hearts, not perfect ones with perfect appearances.  The most important thing is that the Lord’s hand is on Cooper and us and we couldn’t be more thankful for that.