Updated December 29, 2009
 www.lovecounts.net

In the waning hours of the evening, the pastor answered the ring of the doorbell to a boy looking at being a man, and a girl obviously about to be a mother. They needed someone to make their union legal in a hurry - the unborn child was already late. The pastor and his wife took the youngsters into their hearts and their home, bound them together in the sight of God and man and thus formed a bond of love that would span twenty-five years.

It wasn't so many days after that when the pastor opened the door to the mother of the young girl-bride holding the hand of a gamine- faced, little blonde girl. The story unfolded that the mother was going to California to get away from the alcoholic father. It was a story of desperation and need. She had to work and she had the boy of nine to look after. Would the pastor and his wife take the little girl?

God had not blessed the couple, now in their midyears, with a child of their own. It was easy to open their hearts and their home to this little girl who came with the dress she wore and a nightgown under her arm.

It wasn't long before they were Mommy and Daddy, taking to the role as if they had been doing it always. The child, a product of an unhappy home, lapped up the love and unity like a kitten its milk.

Child memories.. a bloody nose wiped; being taught to pump on the wooden swing in the park; to skate with loving hands to guide; a romp on Daddy's shoulders: watching Alfred Hitchcock after Sunday night service; being tucked into bed with love and prayers. Love... being surrounded, wrapped up and inundated with unselfish love.

Child memories planted in love and harvested over a lifetime in times of loneliness or despair, or sometimes, just for the pleasure of remembering.

The idyllic interlude ended just eight months later when the mother came for her child. Even though the pain of separation was like a death in the family, it didn't stop the love and prayers said for a little blonde girl each day for twenty-five years.