Happy Birthday LaBraia

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Happy Birthday to my angel named LaBraia Simone Owens who was born on New Year's Eve, 12/31/2002 in Deaconess Hospital, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. LaBraia is my miracle baby from God. Insurance reasons caused us to have to induce so we waited for LaBraia's blessed arrival but she wasn't coming.

The doctors and nurses kept waiting for LaBraia to fall into position, to lower, to drop, but it wasn't happening. The doctor calmly but immediately reached for what looked like something from the movie Edward Scissorhands to aid in the delivery.

It was going to be a forceps delivery as we were later to discover the umbilical cord had wrapped around LaBraia's neck and throat three times and she was in fetal distress. Forceps are a tong-like instrument sometimes used by a doctor to deliver a baby. Forceps are designed to cradle the baby's head as the handles are pulled, assisting the baby in being born. Forceps are only used during the second stage of labor. A physician may use forceps to speed up delivery if there is fetal distress or maternal exhaustion. A forceps delivery can help a woman avoid having a cesarean section.

So when I say LaBraia is my miracle baby, it is not out of a sense of favoritism or daddy pride issue but she is a walking miracle. I tell her that story to remind her how God protected her then and how He still is protecting her now.

LaBraia is a wonderful child. She is the mother of the home. She makes sure daddy takes his medicine, fusses about what I eat and don't eat and even instructs the kitchen staff of Macedonia to "fix him a plate so he will eat right but put vegetables on it not the normal stuff daddy likes". She prays for members of our church and helps the ministries of the church.

One Sunday, the spirit was high and people were enjoying the worship service when all of a sudden I noticed LaBraia got up from where she was. Walking and playing are things I frown on in church; however, she was not going to play. She walked over to the annex side of or church where a church member was in the "process of praising the Lord". As if she had been here before, she reached for a fan and started fanning, patting, rubbing and hugging all the while reaching for the glasses, taking them off as so they wouldn't break.

When I asked her later what she was doing, she looked at me as if I had lost my mind but politely said, "Daddy, WE ARE MACEDONIA AND WE ARE CALLED TO HELP SOMEBODY, I WAS HELPING."

I love LaBraia with my whole heart. There are times she thinks I preach to hard, that I don't look right or I am doing too much. In most cases, she is right. It seems like yesterday, 7lbs 7ounces 19 and half inches long, this miracle baby was born. My life has never been the same. I pray God allows me to live long enough to see LaBraia accept Jesus as her personal savior, to follow after him in water baptism; to live a life holy and pleasing unto God.

I realize in order for her to live that life, she must see it being lived and modeled before her which is why I take my job as a parent serious. God give me the ability to raise my children in a way that you will be pleased and get the glory.

Happy Birthday Baby,

Daddy