To-Do List

Just in case you forgot how cute she was.

Who is the cutest, most loved and most missed daughter?  I am! That's who!

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I am one of those people who loves to-do lists.

I make them on a daily basis.

I add things to the list that I have already completed, just so that I can cross it off. My students are now making lists. I see them checking them off throughout the day.

So, a to-do list seems perfect.

If you are blessed enough to have a child or children of your own, would you do something for me? Do something that I want more than anything in the world?

Here is a to-do list for you. Unfortunately, I can't cross any of these off my list.  Yet. 

Would you please

• Hug them tightly?  Remember what the hugs feel like.
• Play with them?  Remember their giggles and engrave their smiles in your hearts.
• Cuddle with them?  Remember how they seem to fit perfectly in your arms, like a missing piece from a puzzle.
• Be kind to them?  Don't be the people in the grocery store that  make me cringe when they're screaming at their kids.  
• Tell them how much they were wanted and prayed for?
• Send up prayers of thanks that:
• Your child is with you. 
• You know the sound of your child's voice.
• You know the color of her eyes.
• You are not looked at awkwardly by others on Mother's Day.
• You know how to answer "How many children do you have?"
• You know what it's like to watch your child sleeping peacefully, with a beating heart.
• You are awoken in the middle of the night by cries and whines and screams.   

Be thankful for these signs of life.

Because these things, and millions more, are things that I pray that I will be able to thank God for some day.  I pray that I will be able to get up in the middle of the night to hold my crying child.  That I will be able to comfort her and talk with her and sing with her.  I pray that I will know the smell of my baby's new skin and the dimples in her hands, and the sound of her squeaks.

I pray that some day I will be able to look like her.

Source of this picture here.  Thank you to liferearranged.com for the link!

I pray that I will be able to feel the joy and love that she does. To feel like your heart is about to bust out of your chest.  That you are about to explode with relief and thanksgiving. That, for a moment, the joy will erase the pain and I will know what motherhood is supposed to feel like.

I pray that my tears will be those of joy and excitement and overwhelming love.  Not loss and grief and sadness about a little girl that I will never know.  But whom I love so, so much.

So, moms--be thankful for your little ones.  Even when you think you are going to go crazy with tantrums and dirty diapers and no quietness in your life.  Even when they argue and roll their eyes at you and talk back. 

Just know that there are thousands of us who would trade you in a heartbeat.

We would trade you in a heartbeat just to hear the heartbeat of our little one, just one more time.

Children should be thankful for their moms on Mother's Day.  But, moms?  Be thankful for the children that made you moms.  You wouldn't be who you are without them.