20/20

i can remember being a small child...nighttime was so hard for me. i didn't want to go to sleep. i didn't want to miss a thing. i didn't want to be left out of the action...i wanted to be up with the adults, watching tv and being "big" and "grown-up" like them...

now, as a parent..when i put liam to bed.. i think...wow-to be a kid again. like that, off to bed, no worries..no stress over bills and fertility and insurance and relationships and mortgages and credit card debt. he is so lucky. he is so blessed to have the mind of a child. and be so blissfully ignorant of the world's pressures and trials right now...i am glad for him for that. i want to protect that while i can...

i wish i could go back in time and tell that little girl to enjoy that bedtime a bit more, enjoy being a kid with no worries...that there would be many years ahead, trying ones in fact, in which being an adult would be hard and painful and a lot of work...

i am envious of liam sometimes...that his world is so innocent, somewhat still...that he sees things so purely and black and white.

i lay him in his bed and he drifts off to dreamland...and i walk down the hall into "grown-up" world and pay bills or worry about the money missing to pay those bills and i worry about miscarriages and missing sydney and baby matt and i worry about my family and my mind becomes a mine field of stress and anxiety....

i am calmed by the Hope i know i have in Christ when i focus back on the cross...i am at peace, once i remember that God will never abandon me in the midst of the hectic playground of thoughts in my head...i remind myself that God is good no matter what the news tells me, no matter the fact that my daughter is in an urn instead of my arms, no matter whether our bank account is overdrafted or my husband can't find work, no matter if brokenness is all i see and feel sometimes...i know God is good.

but still, somedays the worry sets in, the despair is heavy and you feel the weight of being an adult, in the real world, being "grown-up" like you wanted all those years isn't what it's cracked up to be-it's hard.....somedays, it sure would be nice to be that kid again...drifting off in my little bed, counting sheep and saying my prayers, tucking all my stuffed animals into bed with me...while the only worry was which nightgown to wear: strawberry shortcake or holly hobbie, or whether my blankie might fall off into the "ocean" (bedroom floor) or that i couldn't stay up and would miss johnny carson....

hindsight is 20/20....