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Ah! I dropped it!" Katriel moaned from the backseat, as we returned home from our Christmas travel. Ready for quiet after days of family festivities, I obligingly retrieved "it"—a wooden stick with a pointy end, that she painstakingly used to scratch away the black wax of a Christmas etch-off book.

As she scratched at the once-plain pages, she found colorful ornaments, a Christmas tree and one page with a tumbling pile of gifts. I never would have guessed that this small gift would have been such a hit! I also hadn't guessed she'd have such patience. But as we "scratched off" the days of travel, she proved me wrong.

While Katriel quietly worked on her pages, her older sister, Delaney, started boisterously singing a song over and over and over again. The dread of hearing that song repeated one more time moved me, yet again, to act quickly. As I turned around from the passenger seat, I used that back-cranking twist I had learned in desperate moments of returning a pacifier to a crying baby.

"Here. Take my journal and maybe you can help me write an article about why no mom should be alone." Hoping she wouldn't run out of material because we had 45 minutes more until lunch, I added, "Or why dogs shouldn't be alone. Or hamsters."

"Thank you, Mom" exhaled Tyler from the backseat, as he looked back at his book. And, while I didn't really expect Delaney to write my article, I put my feet on the dashboard and smiled triumphantly at my husband who was driving. I had created a small oasis of quiet on our journey. Until, less than two minutes later, Delaney handed back the journal, which read:

Why moms, dogs and hamsters shouldn't be alone:

Because it's boring.

Because they'll get lonely.

Because they'll start eating the wire on the top of their cage.

Katriel's fascination with unveiling a surprise, Tyler's love for reading and Delaney's extroversion suggest the outlines of the hidden pictures of our three children. While some of their design has peeked through from toddlerhood, I'm still uncovering new curves that surprise me.

My absolute favorite part of raising kids is finding who each of them is uniquely. Seeing how God has made them to show the world a facet of his beauty. Just like Katriel's etch-book, the design is already there. And I get to discover how to peel back the waxy covering so they might see who God is and know they are uniquely created for him and for others.

This concept of individual shape gets me away from comparing and competing. You know, "My preschooler can read, can yours?" Instead, I find myself cheering for others' kids to grow into the fullness of their design.

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