Oh, the Glory Days

I never have struggled with wanting to go back in time...
not to childhood. not to the high school days. not to young adulthood.

I do agonize over a deep desire to re-live my children's baby-hood and 'do it better' and live in the moment. But my condition is going back with the hard-gained wisdom of now. Here's the kicker: if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't be where I am now. So. God is precious faithful and blessed persistent to pursue our hearts. He has brought me through what we needed to go through to be where we are now and I love it here. Precious closer to Him than ever and more to go and let it come! No fear...well, significantly less fear and its grip is a fair sight lighter than it was.

I have a friend that just had her third baby. I have another friend just pregnant with her third. I have a couple of friends trying to get pregnant, one with her second and one with her first. I have another friend (or two)who may announce pregnancy any day, well, these could be grouped with the last couple quite snugly I suppose!
I am past these days. The glory days.  Whew! How wondrous and delicious is news of a baby. And yet, oy, t.i.r.e.d. As in physical weariness that does not end for ...oh, say, 5-6 years until the precious little blessing goes off to school. And then you realize, you haven't been alone in years. But then a whole other kind of crazy busy-ness takes over.(And what if you home-school?!?!)  And then the teen years of emotional havoc wreaked on your mother's heart! And you find yourself seeing the simplicity of the toddler days which were at least only physically draining, when your problems could be greatly diminished by blessed nap-time, for you and baby!  But its ok(its MORE than 'ok', I have dear friends who haven't been able to get pregnant so easily and it has opened my eyes to the magnitude of blessings I have received), its wonderful, its precious, its sweet, its messy, its very, very difficult and challenging. Tearful. Laughter. Stains. Breaks. Drags unselfishness out of ya.
It changes you like nothing else in life. I am... beyond thankful, I am broken thankful. Enough emotion to split my heart open and pour out, like the woman, Mary, who poured out perfume on Jesus' feet, mixed with her tears, which were even more precious to Him I expect. This woman I identify with, for grace is the sweetest gift.

My babes are 9, 11, 13, 15. My glory days? Are right now. As much as I loved the baby days and even wish I could relive them, on a level that knows its not possible, still, I don't want to be anywhere but right here right now.
These are my glory days.

Thank You, Lord.