So it is that we find ourselves settling into the growing season. The diapers are gone, and along with them the nursing bras and nighttime feedings, and stacks and stacks of adoption paperwork. This is a season of weeding, and toiling in the fields. We get up early, and we crash into our beds at night. There is no time to stop and rest. There is no break until after the harvest, when the fruits have left the stalks, and what's left over gets plowed down, and sold in garage sales (or saved for the grand kids).
Though the winter is far from us now, and our crops are happy and even flourishing, this season of growing will have trouble all its own. There will be rabbits dancing around and moles underground, and beetles and worms and drought and hail and flooding. We will nibble our nails and watch the clouds and pray and pray and pray.
Still, there will be no other time in our lives like the next ten years. This we have been told more than a few times. We've got one shot to invest in these little people. Though it feels like yesterday that Daniel and I were getting married, in that much time from now our eldest will be preparing to go to college. If we think these last ten years flew by, I can only imagine the speed with which these next ten will pass.
My mom had a needlework on her wall, all while I was growing up, which read, "There will be years for cleaning and cooking, but children grow up when we're not looking."
May I be looking. May I realize that this is what I was made for. This is my magnum opus. The crops have been planted and the sun is shining, and I am heading out into the fields now with my Bib1e in one hand and a bottle of extra strength Advil in the other.
And a song in my heart.
Let the growing season begin.
