Just stop for a minute

It's surreal at times, this parenthood gig.

While I was cooking dinner a few nights ago, someone was blaring music in the background. Little boy was riding his skateboard in the dining room again. Someone was arguing with someone else, and it hit me, this wave of gratitude.

Just moments before I had been telling the little one to take the skateboard outside for the 374th time in a row. I had already played referee between the arguers. The music was supposed to be turned down.

Then it hit me, this sudden realization that it all seems unreal.

I have four children. Four kids that are healthy enough to ride skateboards in dining rooms and argue with their siblings. Four kids who have things that they love and are passionate about.

How did this happen?

Obviously, I know how it happened, but sometimes I am filled with such tremendous gratitude at the oddest of times for this life that I have now, this life that I wasn't supposed to have.

We weren't supposed to be able to have children. If there is one thing that I have taken away from the book writing that I've been doing of late, it is this: without all the losses we've endured, without the roads we have walked, there is no way that I would be who I am now. Maybe we would have children, maybe we wouldn't, but we wouldn't have these children.

I feel sometimes like I'm a spectator to my own life. That there is no way this could all be real.

I feel like there is simply no way that I've been the mother to these kids for as long as I have been.

The oldest has been taller than me for a while now. He took his "friend-girl" flowers and a balloon for her birthday this weekend. He shaved for the first time this weekend.

Wasn't he just struggling to breathe in a NICU, bringing me to my knees with fear and hope all at once?


It seems that way, until I see him from across a room now and he looks more like a young man than a boy.

It's all going by too fast, this life of mine.

Just stop for a minute.