Most of the time my happy-go-lucky self leads the way. I try not to think about the days ahead and the challenges that await. I try to live in the here and now, appreciating all the little things along the way. But sometimes the other part takes over. Sometimes I wonder if the love we share, the laughter we experience, the days spent content to just be together will be forgotten once they get a bit bigger. Because right now they are small and when you are small you don't always remember things like this...
Things like our bedtime ritual of bath, books and prayers.
But I will remember, and I will tell them all about our special times.
Like road trips to Florida.
How they fell asleep holding hands in the car and that having a brother is just one way God shows His love.
When they forget, I will remind them why family is so important. I will tell them of time spent on Mamaw and Papaw's front porch and all the love that resides in a white sided house with black shutters.
I will tell them about mornings spent finger painting... how being their mama was and always will be my favorite thing in this whole wide world. How I love them unashamedly. That I believe in their every dream, every far off aspiration.
I will show them with my time, my words, my hugs that there is no mountain I wouldn't scale, no ocean too great to cross, no place they could go where my love wouldn't follow.
They are forever mine, a part of me. They give my heart its beat, my legs their strength, my arms the love in every embrace.
I've known from an early age that the Lord loved me. It wasn't until I had kids that I realized just how much. I've felt pain before but the ache I feel when my kids are hurting is new, fresh and beyond what I thought possible. I've felt love before but that love is so dim compared to the love that transformed me when I first laid eyes on him and him and her. Yes, that is a new love. A love that even if I had all day, all of eternity to explain I would fall short and barely scratch the surface of. It is raw, unconditional, unrelenting. Something I never knew I had the capacity to hold within.
There are so many times I mess up and I plead with the Lord not to give up on me. It's not His character to give up on anyone but sometimes I feel like I could be the exception to that rule. I am far from perfect.
I am then reminded of how great my love is for my kids and how I would never give up on them. He won't give up on me either. And even when I make mistakes, past, present and future, He is big enough to fill up those gaps. And I am humbled by that kind of love. I am humbled by the things He shows me, the patience He has for me, the second chances, the one hundredth. I'm just so thankful for the life He's given us. For the moments we we get to call ours.
...to chilly mornings at the park.
From the small things such as their first time tyring a Girl Scout cookie...
To the silly things such as getting busted using mom's camera...
Important things, like family...
...and taking the training wheels off.
Things like spending summer days at the pool.
Yes, I hope they remember these times and, that when it's all said and done, it adds up to so much love. To something much bigger than I could've imagined. A love they could never, ever forget.
Happy Tuesday out there!
XOXO,
Angie
