Life is funny.
Maybe cruel is a better word, or wonderful? It has a strange way of reminding us what really matters, frightening us into appreciation sometimes. Shoving our fragility right into our faces and breaking us in just the right places to make us cling tighter to what matters most to us.
It gives us days on end of sunshine in the backyard, crystal blue eyes that shine like the water in the kiddie pool, and hand holding because your baby just can’t brave the slide on her own yet. It gives us living room dance parties, months of the same Disney movies on repeat, and the most sweet bedtime kisses you’ve ever tasted.
Life shows us the curiosity and wonder that the world offers first through the innocent lens of childhood, and then again tenfold through the eyes of motherhood. Through motherhood the world presents itself as an entirely new place of fiery passions, deep set instincts, and the most precious moments of life. But they come followed by the deep dark shadows of fear and paranoia. The kind that can only result from holding the most precious of life in your hands, causing you only to realize how shatterable it all really is.
Life is funny.
It allows us to forget, amidst all of the kissing and napping, shopping and swimming, just how quickly it could all change. It’s a beautiful thing, the shield that love provides us with. It blinds us from the chaos just outside our doors everyday. Life is full of beautiful people, and sounds, and words, that we just forget to appreciate every single day. And just as soon as we have been lucky enough to forget for so long, life steps in and reminds us all over again.
I appreciate so deeply all of my life’s strange and quirky elements. I know that I will someday miss Jace laying in bed with me every morning, eating heaping spoonfuls of peanut butter straight from the jar. I know that Zoey won’t let me do her pigtails forever, and that her hair won’t always be so baby soft and smooth. And I am sure that one day I will long for these days so full of exhaustion but so very very full of love. As my children age, I know I will look back at the blurry photos and crave the days that they were too little to hold still. I truly do thank a nameless God each night for all of my blessings.
But life is funny, sometimes wonderful, and sometimes cruel. Sometimes God makes us clutch our own blessings a lot harder, by forcing us to witness them taken away from someone else. Sometimes in this world full of beautiful words, not a single one of them is enough.
