More Than A Day

She texted me to say she had gotten me something..she was so excited.  She's a big girl now, with a big girl car and her own bank account.  I'm still adjusting to this all.  She's a planner, like me.  She always circles around and includes him in whatever she happens to come up with.  It's always been that way.  When she was little she would call for him...where are you? I would look him square in the eye and tell him he better run, her tone said he was about to be named accomplice to whatever she just did.  He rarely listened.  They did everything together.  Still do, as much as two teens can with school and life.  She takes him with her for comfort, for security, for courage.  My two that have functioned like twins even though 15 months separated their births.

There were hard days when they were small.  Diapers for 5 years, bottles and nursing and cloth diapers, no sleep, little sleep, sick days, pool days, potty training, preschool, homeschool, big school.....

They have seen me at my best and also at my very worst.  How do you explain that it's never just a day...it's all the days tied together.  How do you tell them that they have been your salvation more than you care to think about?  That God knew it would be them that would make this journey of mine even possible.  That being their mother would be the one and only thing that kept me breathing some days.  That they have been my only reason to crawl out of bed and even attempt what He was asking me to do.  That doesn't fit nicely on a greeting card.  

Mother's Day is the day when you sit in Wendy's with your best friend, tears over taking your salad and ask how are these possibly my children?  These amazing beautiful people I see each morning? How did all my junk and all these years manage to somehow produce these two?  They are my heroes every day.  They have been told they can do great things....and then they do them.  They have done more things afraid than I will ever hope to.  They have loved and forgiven and grown on the inside more in their teens years than what has taken me 40 to accomplish.  They are every dream I have ever had wrapped up into flesh and blood. How do you hope to sum all that up in a day?  It's impossible.  It doesn't define the other 364 days that follow one morning of forced remembrance.  Mother's Day is the day that I prefer they spend with others. Because I have been their mother every second since conception.  That has never and will never change.  

Today I think of those waiting to become a mother, ones who are a mother even though their little ones are not here to hold, all the ones who have come along side and helped me mother these two I have.  And I pray for the ones who will come and make them parents someday.  Thankful.