Contentment

Well, I said quite some time ago that I was going to be starting my spring cleaning. Then I got distracted. Today I'm finally getting to it. Boo is going to be a year old next month (where, oh where is the time going????), and I needed to find the belts that will turn M's old car booster seat back into a front facing car seat for her, so I had to start cleaning out the drawers in an effort to find them. Then I decided since I'm up to my eyeballs now in drawer junk, might as well keep on going and get this chore completed once again. No more shoving stuff in and forgetting it. That little trick only works as long as you can actually close the drawer.....

So, anyway, I found the cabinet that has all the old pictures, and while going through it I found some pictures from my college roommate's wedding (Hi, Heather!). Boy. We look so young!! But what a sweet wedding they had. And I'm so glad we are still keeping tabs on each other, too, though we've lived so far away for all these years.

I also found some old baby pictures of our kids. I can't believe how much Boo looks like her oldest brother, J. And I found a picture of D in his army uniform when he was in Germany before he went to Bosnia that year.

Reminiscing is fun - in a bittersweet sort of way. It's funny how I remember being the person in all those pictures, but how I'm so different now, too. I still feel about 18 years old, but as I look back at all these memories, it's bittersweet to think how fast time is going and to realize how much I really have changed. I remember thinking that when I got to my mid-30's I'd be so smart and just know so much. I mean, I thought my mom and dad knew so much when I was a kid and they were in their 30's. But, now that I'm here at 35, I realize how much I don't know. I realize how much I still have to learn. And I realize how insecure I still feel about some things and how much of that naive 18 year old is still in there and how often it hits me as just so strange that I am the adult now. And I also realize that probably most people feel the same way. Even powerful, put-together, important people who seem so accomplished probably still have an 18 year old kid inside saying, "How in the world am I here? How in the world has so much time just flown by?"

There have been times in my adult life that I have felt somehow discontent - that somehow I haven't "lived up to my potential." I had good grades all through school and graduated well, though I ended up learning that I absolutely hated the field I'm trained in. I did not choose my college major well, apparently. And when I went back to my 10-year high school reunion, I really felt inadequate talking to people who were making something of themselves in their chosen careers. I was a stay-home mom with my first child who was 10 months old at that time. And until that reunion, I had felt great about that fact. I think we are inundated with the message from the time we are tiny that the desire to be a wife and mom and stay home with the kids is somehow lazy or taking the easy road. Not so. I've learned that this is exactly where I want and need to be. And I've learned not to get too riled up when people ask, "So what are you planning to do when all the kids are in school?" Why do we put so much emphasis on defining who women are by what they do? Why is it that if a woman is not called to be a career woman and who really is called to be a home maker, we make that woman feel she is choosing less than the best for herself?

Something else I realize while enjoying the memories represented by these pictures is that, in no way would I want to go back to being that 18 year old kid again if I could magically be given that chance for a "do over." I know people whose lives were so wrapped up in high school and college and the whole homecoming, prom, big man/woman on campus stuff, that real life afterward is something of a let down. Not me. Most of my real life has happened since school. I married my husband after graduating from college, and then the kids have come along. That's my life. That's where I'm supposed to be right now. And I wouldn't trade it for anything. And even if I had the chance to do it over again, this is the life I would want. I love the family God has so graciously blessed me with, and I want to serve Him faithfully by growing to be a better servant to them.