Nine years later, and still smiling

After Christmas this year, we drove down to Waco, Texas to visit my dad. (We were very careful as far as COVID-19 precautions go, both before and during the trip.) One windy day, we took the kids to Lake Waco, on a trail we'd last walked in November 2011, around the time of our middle daughter's first birthday. "Remember that photo of her in the striped shirt, where we're standing by the wall?" my husband asked. "Let's try to find that same spot and recreate it."

This morning we found the old photo in our family yearbook from 2011. Nine years have gone by, but she's still our sweet "happy baby," the even-keeled one who comforts and gives joy, the yin to balance her more fiery siblings' yang.

She's also, I believe, an answer to prayer. I remember very clearly the day I sat on the porch swing outside our little one-bedroom apartment in Atlanta, rosary in hand and tears of toddler-mom frustration running down my face, and begged God to make it possible for me have a second child. One that could help me be a better mother to our strong-willed little boy, whom I love to the moon and back, but who marches to the beat of no one's drum but his own. It had been clear from the very beginning that our son was not going to be a "typical" child and that he would not be easy to parent. (I'm told I wasn't either, and I'm pretty sure that his more challenging traits all come from me.)

With the benefit of hindsight, my level of despair that day seems to me a bit overdramatic. It's hard to even recall what he could possibly have been doing as a one-year-old that would have made me feel so thoroughly outmatched. But I was a new mother, in a new city hundreds of miles away from any family support, and any little bits of turbulence I encountered became magnified into shock waves.

But when it comes to feelings, hindsight is irrelevant; feelings are truth when we feel them. And dramatic was how I felt that afternoon as I rocked back and forth on the porch swing in the warm Georgia air, praying from the depths of my weary heart. Please, God. I can do this, but you've got to give me another one. For balance. Not long afterwards, our daughter was on the way. The old photo from Lake Waco reminds me of how even as a baby she was so quick to smile, so interested in connecting with the people around her. She brought out the relational side of her big brother, and as they got older, she learned from him how to be more assertive.

Every child has their own set of challenges, and this girl's not perfect by any means, but she does have my husband's gentle, empathetic heart and his natural selflessness. For example, this past Wednesday she was the one who stepped in to finish putting away the Christmas decorations when I had to go start on dinner but the living room floor was still a mess.

We were talking the other night about how hard it will be when the kids begin leaving for college; we simply can't imagine our family without any one of the three. Each gives us joy in his or her own way and is an essential ingredient in the family recipe. Nine years from now, we'll be right smack in the middle of that reality... but for now, we're just enjoying this one.