Growing Up and Going Forward

Being a mom is hard. I mean it's rewarding there's no doubt about it, but y'all it's still hard. One of the hardest parts about it is watching your baby grow up. No one warned me about this phenomenon . . . this whole growing up thing. Oh wait, people actually did warn me. That's what they meant when they said things like, "Time flies" and "They grow up too fast." Who knew?

The truth is I've been pretty okay with Andrew getting older. I wasn't a huge fan of the newborn stage. They eat, they sleep, they poop, and you don't eat, you don't sleep, and I'll stop there. But the other day, I picked my baby up, and he was huge. Huge being a relative term. I'm a really small person, and by small I mean most twelve ten year olds are bigger than I am. So when I say Andrew is huge, it shouldn't be taken too literally. Anyway, I couldn't help but think about when I brought him home from the hospital, and his entire little body would fit on my chest. He was only 17 inches long, and he weighed less than a bag of flour. I couldn't help but think about how he would lay on my chest and sleep while I would read books or watch t.v.

When Andrew was so little, I couldn't imagine that one day he would walk, and talk, and play sports, and make friends, and be too big to sleep on my chest. It's a huge privilege to watch our kids grow and change. It is also one of the most terrifying and humbling yet awesome experiences on this Earth.

Through all of this, God is showing me that growth is part of life. Our children are supposed to grow up, and one day become independent. But growth shouldn't stop with independence from our Earthly parents. As long as we are living and breathing on this Earth, we should continue to grow. We should continue to seek to allow God to change and mature us in a new way with each day that passes. As long as we are growing, we are living. We were not created to live stagnant lives that never change. God created us to dream and live our lives growing and changing and becoming more today than we were yesterday and more tomorrow than we are today.