Moments

It all started with a late night.

Too much playing, too little settling down. She overslept. Too late to pack a lunch and she forgot her lunch money. Her blood sugar sank into the toilet along with her attitude.

After several hours of banging my head against the wall, I dragged myself down memory alley trying to convince myself that life is easier now than it was several years ago. That four children aged seven to eleven are less draining than wee ones that have to be monitored constantly.

That ten-year-old attitude is easier than nursing twins several times in the o’dark hours while tall, dark, and handsome snoozes in the warm bed as I attempt to hold one twin close to nurse while trying to wake the other one up enough to eat.

There are times I’d prefer not to revisit, like the period when Logan went through his interest in all things creepy crawly and we discovered the stinky pile of molding worms on the window sill. When the window was open a breeze blew over their little carcasses, stinking up the playroom.

Or the time he stored the cat in his closet and she pooped in his sock drawer and his method of cleaning it up was to stuff the whole mess down the laundry chute.

And when my oldest was five and as he and I stared at our new oven he turned to me and asked, “What are you going to burn in our new oven?”

And the honesty of children like when my almost three-year-old daughter asked, “Why do your teeth get yellower, yellower and yellower?”

But as I scrolled through my journals I noticed that the hard moments, were just that.

Moments.

Moments that you get through. That you grow from. And the space between those moments holds precious memories.

Like the time my daughter pointed out a rainbow and with a huge smile said, “God painted that.”

Or the time when she said with a beaming grin, “The first thing I’m going to do when I get to heaven is hug God.”

How can you fully appreciate something when all you know is the good? It is the rough times that give flavor and depth to the beautiful ones.