It's Been Too Long

:)  Ahhhhh life.  It's such an amusing thing.  So much of our time is spent planning and making preparations for things that literally disappear in the blink of an eye.  Oh how I had such grand plans for diligently working on my blog, and well....after three entries and the arrival of butterbean # 3, the blog essentially evaporated. None-the-less, the beauty of technology is that files are never REALLY gone and with a little digging and a little prompting from an old pal life and art meet once again.

So much happened over the course of 2011 and this first half of 2012 and the beautiful thing is... God is still busy teaching and leading his children and I feel certain that there is more to come and more to learn long before the sun sets on this historic year.  But before I rest my weary head and find myself drifting off to dream this evening, I feel compelled to give pause to this blip on the radar screen of my life.

St Patrick's Day has never been a day of great importance to me.  Many use this day as an excuse to hang out in Five-Points, some to commemorate their fondness for green, shamrocks and all things "lucky" while others focus on its religious correlations.  I am not Catholic, have a  very real disdain for the color green,  and  I seldom acknowledge even the existence of luck.  And if the WHOLE truth be known, I really have viewed this particular "holiday" as one to be ignored most of my life.  I am usually amenable to the idea of wearing something green on the 17th because I despise being pinched, but I readily admit that I have fibbed a time or two regarding the color of my underwear so as to avoid both having my skin squeezed and the embarrassment of inadvertently having overlooked what I believed to be a B-list holiday. (Thankfully, nobody has ever asked me to prove my choice of color for my "unmentionables.")  This most recent St Patty's Day was all too different for me, however.  What had once been a ho-hum kind of 24 hours suddenly changed in a moment's notice. At approximately 12:30 on Saint Patrick's Day (one year ago) 7lb 8oz  Ashbie Marie arrived.  Now if I am being honest I still haven't quiet made the St Patrick's Day correlation because Ashbie isn't blond- she doesn't have green eyes and if anybody is lucky,  well, it was me. (Actually to have had such a precious angel given to me isn't luck...it's a simple God-given blessing. :)  She was born on 3/17 none-the-less and Ashbie will always share her birthday with this the day of the shamrock and leprechaun. And it was on this day a little over a month ago that we had the honor and privilege of acknowledging Ashbie's blessed arrival with some dear friends and family.  Yes, thousands of children have or will celebrate their first birthday this year, and it wasn't the first time we had put together a little shin-dig for a butterbean, but this time the experience for me was a little different. I still can't quite put my finger on it, but there was a hint of sadness amongst the laughter, squeals and hoopla!  Looking at Ashbie while she partook of her first birthday cake made me take notice of the fact that there would be no more first birthdays to celebrate with my girls. Now God willing there will be MANY more birthdays to commemorate, but there would never be another FIRST birthday to celebrate.  There was something so solemn and deafening about this realization as it sat firmly in the pit of my stomach and within the vessels of my heart. It's a beautiful experience to watch your butterbeans evolve into different creatures as life demands of us all, but it is an experience that can be and has been incredibly difficult.  Sometimes I want to lock my girls away in a tower away from the negative influences of this world, but none of them have long magical hair worthy of climbing expeditions, and my lot isn't nearly large enough to erect such a structure. And regardless of how much I don't want them to be hurt, and how much I don't want them to know about the unpleasantness life sometimes offers up, I realize I can't always protect them or their hearts and yes, this makes me incredibly sad and helpless at times.  But what I can always "hang my hat on" is that none of us can do this alone; we just simply need to walk along side our children and offer them both our abiding love and the advice and guidance God would ordain. Is it going to be easy? No! (Parenting, as my aunt often says, is NOT for wimps) But with the help of my heavenly Father and my trusted village that will pitch in as my butterbeans need structure, discipline and love over the course of their lives, I feel confident I can move beyond these first years and face the future with hope as my butterbeans move into more complicated phases of life. And next year when we place two candles on Ashbie's cake I won't think of that brief melancholy that interrupted her first celebration, instead I will remember the promise of her young life that our great Father has entrusted to Jimmy and me and the brilliant color both Ashbie and her sisters add to it.

Speaking of color, life with three children has certainly changed my perspective.  From the little things that simply require more work (bed making, baths, bag packing) to the more elaborate things that require more stamina. Who knew how much energy it took to CLOTHE THREE LITTLE GIRLS EACH MORNING???? And of course I jest (or maybe I'm not), but life with three butterbeans is never boring. It's never quiet. And it's never to be faced without much needed rest and fortitude. I have often thought about the fact that I manage four classes of 20 + students each day with  relative confidence , but I unashamedly admit to you that my three children can make me dance around like a marionette commanded by a master puppeteer. But despite my constant fatigue and ever-growing desire to sometimes be immersed in complete and total silence, I am so utterly thankful that I have the honor and privilege of being "mommy" to Torie, Emmie Grace, and Ashbie.  And on those days when I am physically and emotionally spent I am poignantly reminded by the lyricist Phil Vassar of my treasures: " Two hearts, one dream...I wouldn't trade it for anything and I ask the Lord, every night for just another day in paradise."

                                                                           -Until then

                                                                                       MJ

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