The measure of love is our memories

Time is our Memories and without memories there is no time.

His smile shows me he is surprised to see me standing there with camera in hand looking at him. He was lost in his world of puppies and boy things. I was looking directly in his eyes and I caught it. His beautiful happy smile that makes him Jo. No warning or directing just him at his best. His eyes a blaze with love and me on the other end getting burned. Have I thanked the Lord enough for this little African boy? The one who continues to keep me amazed at his ability to keep me learning and striving to be a better mom to him? I love when strangers stare at us and ask the questions they always ask. I love to tell his story, the one of a beautiful passage of love and adoption. I love being along side of him and teaching him and training him. I'm glad the Lord chose me to be his mom.

There is no before and after, no sooner or later, no now and then. Time is now and just as the trees slowly give way to spring and you wake up and realize winter is almost over so it's true with the time we have with our children. The Lord only gives us a season. A season and our memories will fade like the winter cold or the summer heat. The passage of time so easily mistaken for long days or long nights with crying babes and long illnesses..  We forget we longed for winter when it was hot..We long for summer when it is cold. We must stop our perpetual longing for something different than what we have and embrace the here and now.  The today.

We forget to look through the lens of time and slow down and see it for what it is. A season to enjoy  our homes filled with little cooks, and baby dolls and boy forts. The world draws us to herself. She tries to draw us away from the walls of our home. Promising us more than motherhood could. She is a deceiver.

 She tries to draw us away from the hours we spend with our children. Telling us we need a life. We have to have our life and staying at home is not important.

Warm baths and lotions is not important. Seeing our children through their days of holey jeans and skinned up knees is not worth a pay-check. The memories fade for most children. Childhood passes without a notice of its importance. The passage of a woman becoming a true servant because she believes that motherhood is the most important calling of her simple life, passes by and very few stand to applaud her diploma of simpleness because the world does not like simple. The world despises the plain dressed, hard working woman who is going against the grain but this woman is raising up the next generation and that scares the world and it should.    

Waking up everyday and knowing you're not backing down from the everyday task of motherhood. Knowing there will be people, even family, who will not respect you for choosing to work and play along side your children from dawn till dusk. The world will tell you that you are wasting your life. The Lord will tell you to die to your life if you want to follow Him.     

The world will try to convince you to give your little chair days and fist full of flower days away. It will lure you away by telling you that motherhood is not glamours or beautiful.

and......someday's it's not. The crying, diapers, and runny noses are not so beautiful but I wouldn't miss all of that because that's part of it. The process in which the Lord leads me closer to trust Him. Those hard days when it seems I can't do anything. My brain being interrupted by so many I can't think. I wonder myself who I am and who I've become. When I go to the store and people stare and avoid our "wolf pack".....like we all just stepped right out of the wild. The days when we go to a restaurant and you see the waiters flipping a coin to see who loses and has to wait on us....
When, at the end of a day, I look and feel older not wiser.. all those days are not beautiful but they teach me to survive and rely totally on my Father who made me to do hard days and hard seasons. I will not quit. I will stand in the gap and make it easier for my daughters to be the beautiful keepers of home as God calls them and I will train them to do their job.

We have only a few seasons of our life and then it's over and at the end there is no going back. I doubt I will regret all of these days with these precious children of mine. 

How do we detect what we call the passage of time except by perceiving change? Without our memories, all change would be imperceptible. So today I will continue to make memories and continue to learn and grow and with the Lord's help become a better mother than I was yesterday and to build more memories so I can see.........this beautiful season of the here and now.

Blessings always,
Robin