Life as it is Today

Annie was not feeling well last night. She and I spent the night on the couch together. We were up from about 1:00 am until 3:30 am. As I was sitting there with her, rubbing her back, I began to think about when I first met TJ. It was eleven years ago that we met on his birthday, October 27th, and then a few days later he came to our apartment for our Halloween party. My roommates and I sat together and played charades....it was so much fun! That was the extent of our party! Well, along with eating soup from inside small pumpkins, having individual tombstone cakes for dessert and decorating the apartment with homemade bats and the fake spider web stuff....you know, a typical college Halloween party! I so remember those first few dates with TJ, when our time spent together was talking about our past experiences and our plans for the future. What fun we had. Had I been given the gift of flashing forward eleven years that night at our party, to see me sitting up all night with a sick child would I still have wanted to do it? Wanted to get married, have children, stay at home with them, clean up throw up and poop, fight battles, listen to whining and crying, drive a suburban, wipe faces and bottoms all day......not to mention toilets and floors too. I am convinced that God makes those first few years together as a couple so wonderful and lovely so that we will be committed enough to get through all the nasty, ucky, stuff of parenting and life.

As I was sitting in the dark with Annie, my mind did a slide show of all that we have been through together in the last eleven years....our wedding, trips we've taken, births of our children, losing Joseph, sickness, houses we have lived in, decisions we have made, job changes TJ has made within the bank, vehicles we've owned, none of which I could even imagine that night long ago.

Time. It's funny to me. There are times when I feel like we are still newlyweds. Then there are times when I feel like we are just keeping our heads above water, struggling to make it through the mononaty of our days, the routine of life, and it feels like forever ago when we were just dating. I wish I could freeze time. I'd like to savor the moments we are living right now.

I am so grateful for them.....

I wish that I would have been given a little glimpse of these four beautiful people, eleven years ago. It's all been SO WORTH it.

And when life gets busy, and messy, when I feel anxious about the future, their health, or their schooling, when I get frustrated that we have no one to watch our children so TJ and I can go out to dinner together or when I am up all night with a new baby, or a sick child and my eyelids feel like they weigh twenty pounds each....I will remember that they are worth it to me. Having TJ and our children are the best thing that has ever happened to me.

I guess the BEST thing that happened was that TJ came to my Halloween party eleven years ago.....and that he had fun playing charades!