Closing Chapters and Opening New Ones

It is always interesting to me that you can be both excited and sad all in the same moment.

This picture was from the first your my girls started home schooling... and the pictures they made me for my homeschool planner that I retired this year.

It was an amazing and sometimes very frustrating ride over the years, but I was so very blessed to be able to share my days with these girls.  I can honestly stay that I probably learned more than they did!

Two year ago Emma started high school.  It was sad to let her go, but she is such an amazing girl and did so very well.  I had 2 more years with Abby at home that just seem to have flow by.

That brings us to today.  Today both of my beautiful girls are back at public school.  Abigail is a freshman and Emma is a Junior.

I have prayed over these girls, cried over them, laughed with them (and at them) and have been so very blessed to call them mine.

I know that God has big plans for these girls and I will pray every day that they will follow him.

It has been so fun to watch them grow and change, an honestly sometimes painful as well, but there is no greater joy than seeing the beautiful young women they are becoming.  They are pretty to look at, but when I see their hearts I just melt a little more inside with gratefulness as I am reminded that they have only been given to me for a short time and that they belong to God.

Stages and Moments

Our girls are 2 year apart and I remember when they were 2 and 4 and I was completely overwhelmed my oldest sister assured me that it was just a stage in our lives and that it would change and we would be on to a new stage.

That was good advice.  I started to be able to see my life in these small pieces that were called stages.  One stage led to another and life moved on to new joys and new challenges.  With each stage came overwhelming problems that would again throw me for a loop and I would have to restart and think again of my life in these stages.

What I am realizing now that my children are 14 and 16 and I am looking back at all of these stages is that these pieces of time are such small moments.  I am learning to hold on to the moments and remember that the problems that seem so overwhelming are the moments that grow, build, and change us.

The true blessing in all of this is that I still have more time to enjoy the precious moments I have with my children and my family.  The key is to enjoy each moment in the moment and learning to do that is both a joy and a challenge.