The first handmade gift that really touched my heart was beautifully wrapped and sitting on an end table.  As our visit concluded, the foster mom presented it to me.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a gift for your baby.”

“For me?  For my baby?”

I cannot adequately describe the feelings I had as I removed the thick, luxurious, beautifully crocheted, pale green baby blanket from the box.  The very first gift for my very first baby was from one of the foster moms.  I wasn’t just the worker whose job it was to check in on her once a month.  I was someone she cared enough about to make a blanket for my baby.  I still have it, in a box in a closet, along with other precious memories from those baby days.

The best handmade gift I have ever received was the baby herself.

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  Psalm 139:13

When that perfect baby was eight she made me a Valentine’s Day gift.  I remember her closed bedroom door, her order not to go in there, the rustling sounds of a busy project.  She knew exactly what she was doing.

She was in there cutting a heart out of construction paper.  A perfect heart.  Then she took photos of herself and of the two of us and trimmed them into perfect hearts.  She glued the trimmed photos into a montage on the construction paper and wove a ribbon around it.

It has been hanging from the lamp on my nightstand for almost 17 years.

I wish I could show you the precious front.  Here’s the precious back:

Made by hand and by heart.